Bandai Namco, the Japanese mega-company responsible for publishing games like Dark Souls and Dragon Ball FighterZ, isn’t looking to strike any distribution deals with the Epic Games Store. Hervé Hoerdt, senior vice president for marketing, digital, and content for Bandai Namco Europe, said the company views Epic as both a serious threat and a major opportunity for the games industry.
On the positive side, Hoerdt said, the Epic Games Store is growing the market.
“We’ve been swimming in the same pool for years, and this pool is made of 200, 300 million people, and obviously the vision to be able to address two billion people or more tomorrow is exciting,” Hoerdt said in an interview with MCV.
But Hoerdt says Bandai Namco isn’t interested in participating, at least not as the kind of partner Epic seems keen on fostering.
“The main focus for us is the consumer and the brand,” Hoerdt explained. “For each brand, we decide what’s the best way to satisfy the consumer and to engage the widest audience possible. So for instance, I don’t see any point in putting Tekken 7 on [the] Epic Store.”
It’s Epic’s push for exclusivity that makes the deal a bad proposition for Bandai Namco, Hoerdt said, not anything else. In fact, the Epic Games Store offers a lot of value for potential clients.
“It’s fantastic, they have a lot of strength and [lots of] users,” he explained. “The business model is attractive to us because it’s more profitable, but still, their interest is—if I’m correct—exclusivity. And this is not our vision.”
Bandai Namco’s next big PC release is Code Vein, which will launch on Steam September 27.