Bandai

Bandai Co., Ltd. (株式会社バンダイ) is a Japanese toy company that marketed and distributed the Playdia system.

History
In 1947, Japanese war veteran Naoharu Yamashina (山科 直治) began distributing toys in Tokyo while working for a textile wholesale business operated by his brother in law. Yamashina spun off this business into Bandai-ya in July 1950, deriving the name from a Chinese phrase that translates to "things that are eternal." Its first original Bandai product, the Rhythm Ball, was released in September 1950. Bandai began exporting products in March 1951 and adopted its present shortened name in May 1961. Yamashina's son Makoto became the president of Bandai in May 1980.

Bandai and video games
Bandai first entered into the computer gaming industry in July 1983 with the RX-78 microcomputer. Tag Team Match: MUSCLE was released in November 1985 for the Nintendo Family Computer and became Bandai's first big video game hit, selling over a million copies. Bandai's first original console, the Playdia (プレイディア), was released in Japan in September 1994. Bandai rapidly expanded its business in the 1990's with the success of its Sailor Moon and Power Rangers franchises. Bandai CEO Makoto Yamashina (山科誠) predicted to The Wall Street Journal in 1994 that the company's interactive sales would surpass that of toys by US$ 1 billion by the year 2000.

Less than 3 months later on December 13, 1994 in Tokyo, Japan, Apple Computer announced its partnership with Bandai to develop the new Pippin platform. Makoto Yamashina had selected Apple's Macintosh as the basis of the Pippin due to its ease of use. Bandai spent $93 million on marketing and development leading up to the launch of the Pippin Atmark in March 1996. By the time it withdrew the consoles from the market in March 1998, over 50,000 unsold units remained in inventory and Bandai's losses from the Pippin were estimated at $214 million dollars.

Bandai's last console to date was the portable WonderSwan series. It was better received in Japan and its variants sold 3.5 million units from March 1999 to 2003. Bandai was also aided in its recovery by the breakout success of its Tamagotchi digital pets, which had been launched in November 1996. By 2010, 76 million of the virtual pets had been sold.

Bandai merged with Namco in September 2005 and presently operates as a subsidiary of Bandai Namco Holdings.

Subsidiaries

 * Bandai Digital Entertainment Company (BDE or BDEC) was established in October 1995 to publish software titles for Pippin consoles in Japan and the United States. Some cross-platform titles were also released for Macintosh and Windows. BDEC was dissolved on March 13, 1998 with the abandonment of the Pippin platform. Its facilities and staff were absorbed by other divisions of Bandai, which continued to provide support for remaining Pippin users until the end of 2002.
 * Bandai Music Entertainment is primarily a music publisher that released only one title for the Pippin — Dinosaur Museum featuring pop singer Agnes Chan.
 * Bandai Visual produced anime, film, and music content which were often distributed under its Emotion label.
 * Banpresto produced toys and games specifically for the Japanese convenience store market. After the Playdia platform was discontinued in 1996, Banpresto repurposed the unsold consoles into coin-operated kinetoscopes called Micha King (みちゃ王) that played anime clips in Japanese arcades. The division was dissolved and merged into Bandai Spirits in February 2019.
 * Emotion Digital Software is a label that published titles for platforms other than the Pippin.