Gaming publisher Bandai Namco is apparently planning something it's calling an "IP Metaverse", a project to let its fans interact across its different IPs through shared interfaces and spaces.
Exactly what that means in practice is a little hard to grasp firmly at this stage, since the announcement from Bandai Namco is necessarily that of a plan rather than of a firm, revealed conclusion.
It says that it will invest ¥15 billion (about £96 million) in the project though, to bring it fruition, so this clearly isn't a passing fancy. Part of the aim is to offer players the chance to "enjoy a wide range of entertainment on an IP axis, as well as frameworks that leverage Bandai Namco’s distinctive strengths to fuse physical products and venues with digital elements".
Whether that means that you'll be able to hang out with fans of the Souls series in one place, the Tales series in another and Pac-Man in a third, or whether they'll all be lumped in together as part of a melting pot remains to be seen.
Part of the aim appears to be finding new markets and growing sales outside of Japan for the publisher, and the metaverse as a concept is a fairly buzzy way to draw attention to itself. That said, we'll need to wait to see what the plan actually results in before we can tell how worthwhile its investment has been.
You can check out a PDF of Bandai Namco's new plan moving forward here, if you'd like to see the publisher's own explanations in more detail.