Rumor: Namco exploring ways for Wii to revive arcade industry

When you encounter an obstacle in your life, there are only two correct choices: face the obstacle head-on, or make the obstacle work for you. Namco Bandai chose the second option when it reportedly decided to find ways on how to make the Nintendo Wii, the cause of Namco’s arcade industry woes, work for the company. Read more in the full article.

When life throws you lemons, you make lemonades. Namco Bandai seems to be following that proverb very closely, now that they’re reportedly checking out how to incorporate the Nintendo Wii to their slowly-diminishing arcade gaming business in Japan.

It was only a month ago when Namco Bandai noted that their arcade business was suffering big losses, and that they chalked it up to the tremendous success of Nintendo’s waggly Wii console.

The reason was simple enough: console games, especially the Wii, made the Japanese kids want to stay at home and play, instead of meeting with their friends outside and play with arcade machines. Add to that the universal appeal of the Wii versus the arcade gaming appeal to core gamers, and there you go.

However, it seems that Namco Bandai is trying to make the Nintendo Wii work to their advantage. It was recently reported that the gaming company is considering the possibility of linking up its arcade titles with the Wii.

No further details were given, but we can surmise that this may involve sharing save files between the arcade version of a game with its Wii counterpart to unlock items, and so forth. There may be other novel ways to combine arcade and Wii gaming, and we can’t wait to find out what Namco Bandai is cooking up.

We’ll be certainly following this news closely. More updates to come!