Bandai Namco Online

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.

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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]