Is it somewhat similar to the Square Enix merger?
MI: I’m not sure if this is how Square Enix did it, but our plan is to merge 50/50. A merger, not an acquisition. But since Square has their strong internal development team, and Enix has more on the production side, in that sense, it might be a similar situation. GS: What was the reason Bandai and Namco decided to merge? MI: It’s an over-simplified answer, but basically Bandai’s main business is toys, and Namco is of course primarily a game company. And if you take a look at the Japanese domestic market by itself, the market size is shrinking. So we had been thinking about what to do for the future. And it doesn’t mean that Namco and Bandai weren’t doing well. We were doing quite well, but we figured we needed to prepare for the rainy days ahead. That’s what the company has been feeling for some time, and we’d been looking at various possibilities. It just happened to be Namco and Bandai that converged, and were both looking for an opportunity like this. We sort of had a similar cultu
