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Bandai Namco Online, as its name suggests, is essentially Bandai Namco's online games arm; in recent years it's been responsible for the publisher's live service push in the form of Gundam Evolution and Blue Protocol.
And now, the plan is for Bandai Namco Online to be absorbed into Bandai Namco Entertainment in April 2025. In other words, it's basically being shuttered.
In particular, Blue Protocol is key part of this story. The multiplayer action RPG was supposed to be the company's first big foray into the live service landscape, but it seriously struggled to find any kind of foothold in Japan, having launched there in December of last year.
Just a couple of months back, Bandai Namco announced that Blue Protocol will be shut down in January 2025, having failed to find an audience. What's more, its planned western release was outright cancelled.
To be fair, it's not like Bandai Namco is unfamiliar with the ups and downs of online games. Just this year, it's launched Tekken 8 and Sword Art Online Fractured Daydream — both of which have a heavy emphasis on their online components. But compared to the expectations surrounding something like Blue Protocol, they fulfil a different role in publisher's catalogue.
What do you make of all this? Were you looking forward to Blue Protocol? Swing and miss in the comments section below.
[source gematsu.com]
Comments 17
Eventually they’ll stop chasing the golden goose.
RIP. To be fair basically all Namco games I’ve played with an online element has had that mode be dreadful and suffer with all sorts of outages and lag.
"What do you make of all this? Were you looking forward to Blue Protocol"
Errrr naw.
Can't say I'm shocked. You dive into that crowded market and you pay for it with your wallet.
I totally forgot about it to be honest there is just to much to play and I just don't want to invest any more time in it.
@SheerDisappointment Basically yes, it was an online action RPG with MMO elements. It was effectively competing with the likes of Genshin.
But all of these live service games are ultimately competing for one thing: your time. Publishers are finally realising how difficult that is.
As long as they keep the online services going for all their Dragon Ball games (Sparking Zero, Breakers, FighterZ, Xenoverse), then I'm ok.
Blue protocol could've been an amazing single player game
Although I'm looking forward to it I think Syn Duality will be a flop for them next year and will probably turn them off online games altogether. Just hurry and get the next Tales of game done and also leave the SAO games behind and move onto something else like a Danmachi, Shield Hero or Reincarnated as a Slime.
Gundam Evolution was REALLY bad. Blue protocol is on amazon. The amount of censorship and the terrible character designs did not do it any favor looking from the outside. I hope they never team up with amazon ever again
First, FromSoft taking back Elden Ring and now this. This year hasn't been kind for Bamco.
They really need that win. C'mon, Bamco, release the newest Gundam Extreme VS game for PS4/PS5 already
Less of that the better
@RedRiot193 Blue Protocol failing was because the game was a flop in Japan that isn't Amazon's fault.
@Ryoth Amazon wasn't helping with western interest. Some games succeed outside of Japan that are often made for japanese in mind. Nobody here was talking about this game.
Just because it doesn't do well in Japan they choose not to bring it overseas! Whaaaaat!? Baka! Me and my friends have been waiting for Blue Protocol to come over to th USA forever, and now the heart breaking news that we never will is devastating! I think it would do better in the west anyway honestly...
We had Blue Protocol in Japan for over a year and the reason it shut down was because of Amazon and it's constant tries to "modernize" it for the modern western audience.
It was the first MMO I played where every update felt like a downgrade. More and more censorship with each update, more stuff taken out on monthly/bi-monthly basis. But hey, there was a big announcement back then how thanks to Amazon we got new features, like darker skin tones and new haircuts. It was a joke... Good thing it shut down before they stripped the game any further.
At least the employees are being absorbed back into Bandai Namco as opposed to being let go.
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