Elden Ring DLC and Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero made up for Bandai Namco's disastrous 2024, spiking profits nearly 1000%

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree final boss Radahn stares into the camera, holding a sword in each hand.
(Image credit: FromSoftware)

Elden Ring DLC and Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero helped drive their publisher's profits up by almost 1000% in 2024.

Bandai Namco published its financial results for the past financial year (which ended on March 31) early this morning (via Automaton). Net sales jumped by just under $600 million to $3.16 billion, but profit spiked a huge amount - growing 995% to $475 million.

That much growth means that while the 2025 financial year was a successful one, the 2024 year was likely substantially worse - cancelled projects and the failure of MMO Blue Protocol meant that there was a big drop in profits last year.

Still, it doesn't take away from the success of Bandai's big-ticket titles. The success of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree should come as little surprise, but I was personally impressed by the selling power of Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero, which was a top-five best seller in the US last year. Shipping 3 million copies in its first day, it became the franchise's fastest-selling game ever.

As for Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, it shipped 5 million copies in its first week, for an approximate attach rate of 20% - a figure almost unheard of for DLC. By contrast, Cyberpunk 2077's Phantom Liberty expansion hit a 23% download rate several month after launch, while The Witcher 3's beloved Hearts of Stone and Blood & Wine expansions boasted 22% and 24% respectively.

Given all that FromSoft success, Bandai Namco is likely licking its lips at the prospect of Elden Ring: Nightreign's imminent release, and is probably pretty sad that it's not publishing The Duskbloods.

Our list of the best FromSoftware games could soon be in need of an update.

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Ali Jones
News Editor

I'm GamesRadar's news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.

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