Talk:Namco/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Indrian (talk · contribs) 04:41, 28 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Great company with a great history. It will be my privilege to review this article. Comments to follow, though the process may take a bit for an article of this scope. Indrian (talk) 04:41, 28 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm in no rush, please take as much time as you need. Thanks for reviewing! I look forward to your comments. Namcokid 47 ^(Contribs) 04:58, 28 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I will be taking this in chunks. First chunk inbound.

Lead

"beginning as a producer and distributor of coin-operated amusement rides" - I know leads are condensing a lot of complex material, but the company really started as an operator of amusement rides and expanded into the production and distribution side of the business a little later.
- Wrote it was an operator.
"Namco's first major hit was the fixed shooter Galaxian in 1979" - its first major video hit sure, but it had several hits before that of the non-video variety.
- Noted that Galaxian was one of its first hits.

Origins

"Beginning with only US$12,000" - I believe there are sources that give his original market capitalization in Yen. As the company is in Japanese, it would be more appropriate to use the native currency and provide a rough conversion to dollars for the American audience.
- The amount of yen was mentioned in the Trade & Industry article and the Bandai Namco timeline site. Namcokid 47 ^(Contribs) 02:12, 29 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
"who began designing other kinds of amusement games such as goldfish scoopers and picture viewing machines" - I think this may be dating the manufacturing part of the business a little to early. The Sawano book talks about installing a picture viewer, but says nothing about creating it, while the Ishimura interview does not talk about manufacturing or designing in the early days at all, it just talks about operating goldfish scooping bowls, which are not really designed games so much as little aquariums full of goldfish. I don't believe this statement is supported by the evidence. Also there is no mention of the company's expansion into other department stores between the first location and the Roadway Race breakthrough as discussed in the Sawano book and Akagi. As the article stands, it appears the Mitsukoshi location was their second location.
- This was a colossal screwup on my end. Admittedly for this part I did a lot of it based on memory and didn't do proper fact-checking aside from skimming the history page on the Japanese Bandai Namco site. The Smith book clears all of that up so I moved some stuff to later portions of the article section and clarified a few things. I actually didn't know Nakamura was able to make an entire amusement space, all this time I thought Roadaway Race was the only thing he did for it.
"Noticing Nakamura's successful business, the Mitsukoshi department store chain approached him with the idea of designing a children's ride for the roof of its store in Nihonbashi, Tokyo" - Not wrong, but I think they technically wanted complete rooftop amusement spaces in which the ride was the centerpiece.
- Clarified that they wanted a full-blown theme park area, not just the one ride.
"Nakamura Manufacturing opened its own production plant in 1967, moving its corporate office to a four-story building in Osaka" - Two things here. First, all the sources including the old Namco corporate timeline and the Sawano book indicate the factory was established in February 1966. Second, I do not believe they were ever an Osaka company. I believe the new headquarters was also in the Ota Ward of Tokyo just like the factory.
- That was actually a typo I made, which I've corrected. As for the claim they were based in Osaka, I read that they moved to a new building on the BN timeline site and for whatever reason I thought it said Osaka, not Ōta, and never gave it a second look. Fixed.
"Its other products included Ultraman-themed gun games and pinball-like games branded with Osomatsu-kun characters." - They also had rides based on anime characters like Q-Taro as well, not just Disney characters.
- Noted.
There is a piece of the Nakamura Manufacturing story missing, which is discussed in the Smith book: after the company became a major operator in the 1960s, it used its clout to buy from manufacturers in bulk and then served as a distributor for smaller outlets by charging full price for the machines it got at a discount. I think this preview hits it if you don't have a copy.
- I was able to look at the preview and I added that information into the second paragraph.

That's it for the first round. More to come soon. So far its looking really good despite my little nitpicking. Indrian (talk) 22:17, 28 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comments so far. Addressed them and provided some feedback. Namcokid 47 ^(Contribs) 02:12, 29 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

And we are back. Thanks for your patience and for working through some of the above issues.

Galaxian, Pac-Man, and arcade success

"It was released outside Japan by Midway Manufacturing" - Really, Midway was the North American Manufacturer. It probably appeared in some other places around the world too, and I don't think that would have been Midway.

Success with home consoles

There is some important history missing here. As written, the article indicates that Nintendo started a licensing program, and Namco signed up. In actuality, a Namco employee reverse engineered the Famicom and created a port of Galaxian and then Namco basically said we are publishing this with or without you. This was the impetus for Nintendo starting its licensing program (they had already granted Hudson permission to make games, but that was a special one-off as a reward for doing Family BASIC). I believe The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers, Vol. 2 covers a lot of this material in the interview with Yoshihiro Kishimoto.
- The interview that 4Gamer did with Ishimura has some more meat to this story (this info comes from him, not 4Gamer itself). Namco wanted to make Famicom games as early as '83, but when its arcade ports for platforms like the Sord M5 flopped, they decided to hold off on the idea to see if the system would be a hit or not. Nakamura let Ishimura and a few others reverse engineer its hardware in the meantime though, as if the Famicom was a hit then Namco would be more than ready to start working on games for it. I do remember Kishimoto bringing it up in the Untold History book, but I don't have access to it atm so I went with the 4Gamer article and whatever else I already had.
"Namcot also began development of original software, such as Star Luster." - This sentence feels like its just sorta tacked on. And honestly, is Star Luster really important enough to single out in the top level article?
- Not really. It might be worth mentioning in the History of Namco page but it's not necessary here. Tossed.
"After enduring numerous financial difficulties and losing its control in the industry, parent Warner Communications split the company into two entities." - So we have a little bit of Atari corporate history here that is not quite right. Warner did not split the company in two. What they did was sell certain divisions of the company to Jack Tramiel. Atari Corporation was not something created by Warner: it was the new name Jack Tramiel gave his own company, Tramel Technology (deliberately misspelled in the hopes people would pronounce it correctly), after he purchased those assets from Atari. Warner renamed Atari, Inc. to Atari Games, Inc. at that point to distinguish the two companies. After the sale of the coin-op division to Namco, which was technically acquired by a new subsidiary of Namco America called AT Games, Inc., Warner changed the name of Atari Games, Inc. to Atari Holdings, Inc. Ain't corporate branding wonderful? Obviously all those name shenanigans don't need to go into this article about Namco, but just make sure what is written in this article conforms to that corporate reality.
- Ahh, so that is why I kept thinking it was wrong. I had a feeling there was something off about that paragraph but couldn't pinpoint anything specific. Great to have some clarification here! I squeezed whatever useful/relevant info was in here and added it into that paragraph.
"Viewing its acquisition as being largely unsuccessful, in 1987 Namco America sold the majority of its shares to Warner, while still retaining its right to release Atari games in Japan" - More corporate shenanigans, hooray! So in 1987, Namco did not sell anything to Warner. At that time, Namco owned 60% of the company and Warner owned 40%. Namco then sold one-third of its ownership stake, or 20% of the company, to a group of Atari Games employees led by Nakajima. Since the company was now split 40-40-20 between three groups, no one owned a majority of the stock and the company because independent again as a result. So Namco still kept a sizeable stake in the company, and in fact Nakamura continued as chairman of the board of Atari Games until the middle of 1988.
- I'll need to find the source for Nakamura being chairman of the board until 1988 (I did see it somewhere but forgot where), but I reworked that entire paragraph to correct these mistakes.

Expansion Into Other Markets

"A company reorganization lead to Namco America acquiring Atari Operations from Atari Games, allowing Namco to operate video arcades across the United States." - This statement is correct, but we also need to close out all our Atari corporate shenanigans at this point. Basically, Time Warner reacquired the remaining 40% of Atari Games still owned by Namco (technically, it was 43.8% because some of these other figures previously were rounded) in return for Atari Operations.
- Clarified. The Game Machine article even said this, so I don't know how I glossed over that.
I am not sure exactly where this should go, whether in this section or at the end of the previous one, but the fact that the System 22 hardware was developed in conjunction with defense contractor Evans & Sutherland should probably be included. Both Namco and Sega were able to take their polygonal hardware to a whole new level by partnering with defense contractors, which themselves were desperate for new revenue streams with the end of the Cold War and cuts to US defense spending.
- Yeah, I really wanted to bring up the System 22 and E&S in detail but didn't know where to put them. I mentioned S22 while discussing Ridge Racer, but I still think it's absolutely worth mentioning elsewhere. I'll think of a way.
"Namco America acquired Atari Operations in July 1993 and renamed it Namco Operations" - Not sure why this is back again. Both the purchase and the rename took place in 1990.
- That must have been some kind of error, I don't remember putting that in the text. Tossed it out for not being true.

Well, that should keep you busy for a little bit. I'll have more soon. Indrian (talk) 16:07, 14 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks for your comments. I've addressed this next set of issues with some feedback and explanations. In the meantime, I'll try to put in something about Evans & Sutherland. Namcokid 47 ^(Contribs) 23:12, 14 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, sorry for the delays between posts here. Nothing like doing a GA review of a long article during the holidays in the middle of a pandemic. I appreciate your patience. Time for another round!

Relationship with Sony

"The console began as a collaboration between Nintendo and Sony to create a CD-based peripheral for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1992" - Good old IGN. The contracts were actually signed all the way back in 1988.
- IGN? Wrong? Unbelievable. Anyways, fixed.
"with Namco receiving a Guinness World Record for this achievement" - On the one hand I get that this is a form of recognition. On the other hand, its Guinness. Not sure the achievement is worthy of inclusion.
- This was written before I've delved more into the seedy underbelly that is Guinness, so I agree it's totally worthless. It isn't sourced, either, so we're not losing anything here.
The second paragraph is talking about two different things. First it talks about a lot of home stuff, and then it tacks on some coin-op at the end. I would break this into two paragraphs and maybe flesh out the coin-op stuff slightly.
- I had no idea what to do with the arcade stuff at first. On one hand, I felt it was very interesting information and was necessary while discussing Namco's history in the late-90s. But on the other hand, I didn't know if there were really enough "key titles" that could warrant such a paragraph at the time. So I just tacked on the arcade stuff since I had nowhere else to put it for the time being. I did eventually find some more juicy info on these games (and some other things they did for arcades), so its own paragraph was most certainly warranted.

Financial decline and restructuring

"In light of its struggling finances, the company continued expanding operations" - As written, this just seems counterintuitive. Sales are bad, so we keep growing? I assume this is more about diversification than growth, right. Maybe couch it in those terms instead?
- Yeah, that's what I meant. They were losing money so they tried moving beyond their usual arcade and consumer software divisions, which is what I tried to summarize.
"Though its arcade cabinets and games were still proving profitable, sales were lower than expected." - So if the arcade games were still profitable, why was there a loss? I assume they were taking losses in their operating division? This section needs to clarify what parts of the company were losing money if possible.
- Lots of the info about its losses were either out-of-order or just outright wrong based on other sources, so I ended up just nuking those first three paragraphs and starting over. Hopefully I managed to properly explain the what and why here.

Bandai takeover and dissolution

"As of 2018, Namco USA, Namco Enterprises Asia, and Namco Funscape—the amusement facility division of Bandai Namco Europe—remain the last companies within the holding company to use the original Namco trademark." - Is this still true in 2020?
- Yep, they're still operating under those names. That was something I forgot to fix when I started editing this a year or so ago.

And that's it. There will still be some more work to do after this as I start paying more attention to grammar and how the sections fit together as a whole, but this gets us through the major content review. I'll go ahead and officially put the nomination On hold while this latest round is addressed, but I have no doubt we are looking at promotion very soon. Indrian (talk) 15:46, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Indrian: Okay, that should be it! Sorry it took so long to wrap these issues up. Namcokid47 ^(Contribs) 08:54, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Indrian Do you have further comments, or are willing to pass or fail? P anini ^🥪 19:02, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- He's planning to wrap it up sometime this week. Namcokid 47 ^(Contribs) 19:17, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  - Alright, sorry to bother. Just saw this up for a while. P anini ^🥪 19:49, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I suppose since we are all here anyway, we might as well get this thing promoted. I have completed a thorough copy edit to clean up some language here and there, and I feel the article is now ready for promotion. This may well be the best article on a video game company on the entire encyclopedia, and I encourage you to take it to FAC at some point. Truly well done! Indrian (talk) 19:02, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]