Now here's something that seems to have come completely out of the blue: Bandai Namco has a brand new IP in the works and they will be unveiling it during this year's GamesCom event in Cologne, Germany.
Shacknews is reporting that they've received a press release from Bandai Namco indicating that the company will be unveiling a brand new game at this year's big event in Europe and that it will be on display alongside a couple of other heavy hitters due for release soon, including Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 and Tekken 7.
They didn't offer any details on what this new game will be, but it will be a new intellectual property. Shacknews hopes it's going to be as significant and original as the very cool and visually striking Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, from Ninja Theory -- a game that was very awesome to look at and had decent gameplay but just never picked up a strong enough audience to justify a sequel.
Bandai Namco hasn't been known for throwing out new IPs often, and they've mostly been reliant on a stash of properties, including their long running Tales Of series, the Dragon Ball IP, the One Piece IP, the Naruto Shippuden IP, and their Soul Calibur and Tekken titles.
The Ridge Racer games have fallen off by the wayside in recent years, as the franchise seems to have lost its way and in result has lost its identity. It's unlikely that Bandai would be pursuing a new racing IP given that they haven't really focused on that genre much over the years aside from Ridge Racer. They have distributed some other racing games made by other developers, but in terms of publishing racing games... that isn't really their forte.
A new fighting game seems unlikely. They already have the aforementioned Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 set to release this fall, and they already have Naruto Shippuden filling in between those slots. That's not to mention that Tekken 7 is due for release at the early start of 2017 for home consoles and PC. Katsuhiro Harada, the famed producer of the Tekken series, also noted that they already have Tekken X Street Fighter mostly finished but they can't release yet because they don't want to cannibalize the sales of Tekken 7, which makes perfect sense. So it's unlikely that Bandai would put yet another fighting game into the mix when they already have two high-profile fighters waiting in the wings.
A new action adventure game doesn't seem unlikely. They already have the RPG category filled out with several Tales of games, including the upcoming Tales of Berseria and Sword Art Online.
For those of you thinking that maybe the new IP is a flight sim... I would say that that's seem likely given that they also have a new Ace Combat game in the works for virtual reality headsets. It would end up being like Tekken X Street Fighter and Tekken 7 all over again if they have yet another flight sim in the works alongside Ace Combat.
Once again, the likelihood of the new IP being a hack-and-slash style game seems possible. They had quite a bit of success publishing the Dark Souls games, and I don't see why they wouldn't attempt to capitalize on that with a new IP based around that concept. We'll likely find out when Bandai makes the announcement between August 18th and August 21st at this year's GamesCom event in Cologne, Germany.
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