Japanese group BANDAI NAMCO to establish a new company dedicated to the development of mobile games in Barcelona

• Specializing in the creation and commercialization of videogames, BANDAI NAMCO will centralize the Western development and marketing of mobile entertainment products at the Catalan capital.
• To establish in Catalonia, the group has received the support of Catalonia Trade & Investment, the Government’s agency for business competitiveness.
• The company has chosen Barcelona because “it is a hotbed for international video game development and home to the best talent the mobile industry has to offer”.

The Japanese group BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment, specializing in the creation and commercialization of videogames, has chosen Barcelona to establish a new company dedicated to the development of mobile games as well as commercialization activities in the Western market.

This project is supported by Catalonia Trade & Investment, the Government’s agency for business competitiveness.

According to the CEO of BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment in Europe, Naoki Katashima, “setting up a separate company for all our Western mobile development and marketing allows us to react better to market tendencies and create higher quality content at a faster pace”. The company has chosen Barcelona because "it is a hotbed for international video game development and home to the best talent the mobile industry has to offer".

The Catalan minister of Business and Knowledge, Àngels Chacón, highlighted that "BANDAI NAMCO’s investment shows the commitment of Japanese companies with Catalonia, where there are currently more than 254 established companies, as we have seen during the institutional mission in this Asian country organised last week". "Catalonia always opens the doors to talent, especially in sectors as innovative as videogames and the mobile industry", Chacón added.

Under the name BANDAI NAMCO Mobile, the new company will start operating fully in Barcelona in early 2020. The Japanese group is known for having developed videogames such as PAC-MAN, Tekken or Dragon Ball Z. Based in Tokyo, BANDAI NAMCO group gathers 88 companies and overall has more than 8,300 employees all over the world.

The company is supported by Catalonia Trade & Investment, which is dedicated to foreign investment attraction. The agency operates from Barcelona alongside a network of 40 foreign trade and investment offices around the world, aiming to attract new foreign investment projects to Catalonia. According to data from ICEC (Catalan Institute for Cultural Companies), the video games sector in Catalonia is currently comprised of 140 companies that have a global turnover of 364 million euros and employ almost 3,000 employees.