All right what’s going on guys it has been 209 days since Elden ring DLC was announced back in February earlier this year and since then it’s been radio silence at all fronts with little more than an acknowledgment of its existence by official sources and as fans we’ve been left to speculate chasing every single little scrap of news no matter how small to get an idea of what it’s going to be like or when it’s coming out and today is another one of those days because we have more official sources talking about Elden ring DLC and actually giving us a little window of when it might be coming out that sounds very promising although to be fair
we are going to be putting on the tinfoil hats a little bit but we’re gonna break all of that down right here but before we get into that if you want to stay up to date on all things Elden ring armored Core and from software and enjoy the lore and general discussion then go ahead and hit that subscribe button and now let’s get into it our discussion
Interview with the CEO of Bandai Namco
Today is going to come from an interview between the CEO of Bandai Namco EU in a games Journal called gamesindustry.biz so the source here is quite literally as official as it gets the article is titled Bandai Namco every publisher has to focus more on their own expertise European boss Arnon Muller on maintaining momentum post-elden ring and challenges of the market and they’ve been hyping up this interview for quite a while on their website with a few segments released beforehand relating to armored Core and I’ll touch on that more in a minute but let’s go ahead and just get straight into it and read it from top to bottom at least the relevant
Parts 2022 was a stellar Year from Bandai Namco thanks to Elden Ring’s critical and commercial success as a result 2023 felt like it was all going to be about maintaining that momentum when we asked Bandai Namco Europe CEO Arnon Mueller about how well the company has managed to rise to that challenge this year he first points to Elden Ring’s DLC the shadow of the earth tree announced earlier this year and due to release soon but he also points to armored Core 6 which he says
Is the current focus in Bandai Namco
And from sophomore’s relationship as we previously reported right after our interview with Mueller at Gamescom The Firm expected Elden ring success to have widened armored course audience and therefore anticipated the title to be a success and it’s fair to say that it has been with armored Core 6 topping the UK box charts the US monthly charts the European listings and sitting among the best sellers of the Year globally but from software’s title’s continued success is not all there is to Bandai namco’s 2023 Mueller wants to highlight and the article then goes on to talk about the rest of Bandai namco’s catalog that does not include from software so even though that was a relatively short section of the article in the interview we have a lot to break down here first
Release Window
Of all it opened up talking about the year of 2023 as a whole for Bandai Namco and the very first thing that the CEO mentions is Elden ring DLC now this sounds very familiar to what Bandai Namco was talking about a while back when they discussed their primary focus games for the year an Elven ring DLC was at the top of that list now that was back before Summer Games Fest and was one of the reasons we were kind of hyped up to potentially see it there but of course we didn’t see anything now that can still be their main focus without actually revealing anything
to the public which seems to be the case but the common denominator here is 2023 now we’ve gone the entire entire year with basically no news we’re coming up on the end of September and only a few months left in the calendar year so if Elden ring DLC was actually going to release in 2023 theoretically we should have gotten a trailer by now but of course since this is a DLC they may not be wanting to put an entire marketing push behind it and we’ll talk about that more in a minute but let’s break down
What 2023 means normally we’d all assume
December 31st being the final cutoff date for 2023 but when talking business that’s not the case the fiscal year for 2023 ends in March 31st of 2024 on the calendar which is entirely possible to be what they were referring to now if that is the case we’ve got a lot of key dates in that time frame such as the two-year anniversary of Elden Ring’s release and spring in general tends to be when from software likes to release their games armored Core 6 being a pretty big exception to that rule but for the past decade pretty much all of the main line from software games have released
in the early parts of the year and so we have to think about the DLC kind of like that are they going to be treating it like a full game release and giving it a full marketing song or is it just gonna be another DLC and there are some other questionable things in that first paragraph notably that they don’t use any actual quotes from the CEO when talking about the DLC and that may be
because they discuss things that weren’t
Allowed to be released publicly
And because of that we don’t know if what’s being said is actually from the CEO himself specifically when they say that the DLC is due to be released soon for all we know that could just be an assumption on the interviewer’s part but given that this paragraph is summarizing what was said by the CEO there’s a pretty good chance there that they actually said that but the question is does soon mean before December 31st or to soon also include all the way through March unfortunately we don’t have that answer but let’s shift through the second paragraph now because we have a lot to extrapolate from that as well
Bandai and FromSoftware
This one mainly focused on Armored Core but there is an important takeaway the very first sentence there reads but he also points to armored Core 6 which he says is the current focus in Bandai namcohen from sophomore’s relationship and that can mean a number of things because why would they mention Elden ring DLC being their biggest Folk for 2023 and then immediately in the next paragraph say that armored Core 6 is their main focus and we know armored Core 6 is still getting support for the immediate future in this same interview
he mentions that they want to take this IP further in the relationship with from software and when this quote was released a few weeks back I took that to mean DLC or a follow-up game like they’ve done with past armored Core generations and that still may be the case but what that could also mean is that they want to continue to Market ac6 and considering that the holiday season is coming up that would probably be smart now Bandai namco’s job is to publish their games including ac6
Including Elden ring and Elden ring DLC
Whenever that comes and so what that means is whenever one of these games comes out Bandai Namco gets revenue and considering that Elden ring DLC is going to sell massively it’s no wonder that would be their top priority so if we entertain the idea that Elden ring DLC could release without a marketing push from Bandai Namco meaning that from software alone is working on the DLC and pushing it out to the markets Bandai Namco could still be focused on acc 6 and received the cut from Elden ring DLC and in my opinion that’s what this sounds like the most which might
Armored Core Effect
Actually be the smartest play with all of this to continue to Market armored Core to those fans that are going to be paying attention to Elden ring now that armored Core 6 is already released there’s no longer a conflict of interest only eyes to be gained and not to mention armored Core 6 has rave reviews so in the meantime of waiting for Elden ring DLC it would be a great game to check out if they passed up on it the only question I have is how much of that momentum is still remaining has it been too long if they choose to not push
Elden ring DLC in the marketing sphere would it still have that same stopping power that the original game did I think so but two years is a long time to wait so we’ll just have to see give you my honest thoughts on when it’ll release I’m very divided I can totally see them dropping a trailer any day now and having it released around November
Which we had signs pointing
To but if I had to put money on something I would say a trailer at TGA in December and then the release around the two-year anniversary in February that is absolutely the safe bet but it really still feels like so far away I know we’re still in the same
month that armored Core released and don’t get me wrong I absolutely loved that game it’s my personal game of the year but it didn’t really have the lasting impression that Elden ring did due
to it being more of a niche title and that’s something they even acknowledged in the interview so personally I don’t think there has to be much of a gap between these releases as it’s not really going to help it out much like I said there’s no longer that conflict of interest but that’s just my thoughts on it but what do you make of
Conclusion
All of this how do you take this interview and what it shows us what their plans for the DLC now that we know Elden ring DLC is next up on the list I think we’re gonna start seeing a lot more going forward people are going to be less scared to talk about it and of course whenever we find out I’ll be here to keep you guys up to date anyway though guys that is going to pretty much do it
