Nintendo may buy a bigger stake in Bandai - Iwata

Console giant Nintendo is considering the purchase of more stock in Bandai, one of the biggest holders of valuable media IP in Japan - although there are currently no plans for a complete buyout, according to Nintendo president Satoru Iwata.

Speaking at Nintendo's corporate strategy conference in Tokyo, Iwata expressed an interest in buying a larger stake in Bandai - extending its current 2.6 per cent share, which already makes it into the media company's ninth largest shareholder.

While Iwata tempered this comment by saying that Nintendo does not have any plans to buy out Bandai at the moment, he is clearly aiming to firm up the relationship between the two companies - and perhaps even to win a seat on the Bandai board for Nintendo, which could have serious implications for the Japanese games industry.

Bandai owns some of the most important media franchises for the games industry in Japan, including Gundam, Digimon, Dragonball Z and an enormous range of other properties - some of which, like Dragonball Z, are also strong sellers outside Japan. While the company already supports Nintendo's platforms, closer ties with the Kyoto-based firm would be a major boost to the fortunes of the platform holder in Japan.

Rumours that Nintendo was planning to acquire Bandai first emerged last year, when the company originally picked up its 2.6 per cent stake in the firm, and were quickly quashed by official statements from both sides - although in a curious interview which appeared in the Japanese business press, a son of the company's founder later claimed that there had been a conspiracy within the Bandai board to facilitate just such a takeover by Nintendo.

While both sides continue to hotly deny any possibility of a takeover, this latest announcement by Iwata is hard to see as anything other than a further step in a complex courtship dance between the two companies - which may not end in a merger or takeover, but is certainly heading for a scenario where Nintendo platforms enjoy even stronger support from Bandai's hugely important portfolio of properties.