Yes, a thousand people. More than that, actually. The teams behind Soul Calibur, Ace Combat, Tekken, Pac-Man, Tales, Naruto, Gundam and countless other Namco and Bandai videogames will be merged together to form the imaginatively named “Namco Bandai Studio”. Starting in April, this new entity will be in charge of managing all game development responsibilities, including for current franchises and the creation of new IPs. What does this mean for you, the average gamer? Probably not much, since consolidations like this are common, like when Tales Studio got fully absorbed last year.
HOWEVER, if you take into account Namco Bandai’s love of crossover-based collaboration, and the possibilities are infinite...and terrifying. Imagine a hypothetical Soul Calibur sequel, featuring guest fighters from the next Tales RPG, plus Tekken dudes, Pac-Man, Klonoa, Ridge Racer race queen Reiko Nagase, and Missile the Pomeranian from Ghost Trick "because them Capcom guys is good people". Premium download content turns Nightmare's Soul Edge sword into an Ace Combat fighter jet with an Idolm@ster-themed paint job. And it all uses the Ace Combat Assault Horizon slogan, "Make Metal BLEED."
Best. Game. Ever.
Contest:
1:00 PM on 02.10.2012 | 
Def awesome!
@Evil Champ
I'm with you, awesome game, but Namco Bandai just published it.
We are legion
We are Namco Bandai
Utilize all 1000 of them to make a Gundam game.
as far as i'm aware, Namdai already owned 100% of all of these studios, so where is the advantage in merging them all together, when they could easily transfer staff between studios at will?
Me too!
WHAT DID YOU DO WITH MISSILE!!??
...lol ^_^;
good to see Soul Calibur V won't be the last in the title(which they said they want to keep making more even up to IX)
so yeah awesome news!!!
very excited to see some new games from them(hopefully)
also a Gundam game with all of the franchises series along with Armored Core, ACE Another Century, Code Geass, Xenosaga, Zone of the Enders and pretty much all of the Super Robot Wars entry all in one game, but the gameplay is Zone of the Enders style 60FPS 1080 FUCKING P GOODNESS!!!!!
Every development studio, or even a development team inside a studio, has it's own cultures, it's own ways of working, developing... this "merge" will make a lot of people unhappy. There will also be a lot of jobs made redundant, because if everyone's under the same roof, there's not need for as many managers/directors, and I'm sure that was part of the reasoning why this merge is happening in the first place.
I think that if they find a way to respect each of the team's cultures, and let them work on the titles they enjoy doing, there will be a talent leak as a result, not directly of this, but with this being the "last drop".
I wish I could say this would fix most of Namco's problems and lure them away from the path of oblivion, but I don't see how putting the people that make Pacman and the ones that make Tales together a good thing.
On an unrelated note, and this is to a Namco representative if he happens to be reading this: PUBLISH TALES OF VESPERIA PS3 FOR THE WESTERN MARKETS.