Tales of Eternia
The business takeover, where Bandai acquired Namco for 175.3 billion ($1.7B), was finalized on September 29. An entertainment conglomerate named Namco Bandai Holdings was established the same day; while their executive departments merged, Bandai and Namco became independently-operating subsidiaries of the new umbrella holding company. Kyushiro Takagi, Namco's vice chairman, was appointed chairman and director of Namco Bandai Holdings. The combined revenues of the new company were estimated to be 458 billion ($4.34B), making Namco Bandai the third-largest Japanese game company after Nintendo and Sega Sammy Holdings. As its parent company was preparing for a full business integration, Namco continued its normal operations, such as releasing "Ridge Racer 6" as a launch title for the newly-unveiled Xbox 360 in October and collaborating with Nintendo to produce the arcade game "Mario Kart Arcade GP". The company honored the 25th anniversary of its "Pac-Man" series with "Pac-Pix", a puzzle game for the Nintendo DS, and entered the massively multiplayer online game market with "Tales of Eternia Online", an action role-playing game based on its "Tales" franchise.