Namco Bandai "Banadroid" App Store Launches

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Game publisher Namco Bandai has launched its own application store for in-house  and developer-built Android applications. Dubbed Banadroid, the service has launched in Japan, and plans to target game enthusiasts in the Asia Pacific region.

AsiaJin reports that Namco Bandai has launched Banadroid, a new application store, with focus on local game developers in Japan. The service plans to be an Android Market of sorts, which handles user registration, billing and distribution of the games and apps. The service currently has only 12 titles, including Pac-Man, Blood Memo, Ridge Racer and a few other Japanese-language titles like Katamari Damacy, Hanabi Tatsujin (Firefoworks Master) and Panda to Nemeko (Panda and Mushroom).

Banadroid is far from alone in running a third-party app store for Android, though. English-language sites like Amazon’s AppStore, AppBrain and other such sites cater to Android users, offering utilities, games and other apps meant for Android smartphones and tablets. Other regions also offer their own special app stores, given certain limitations. For example, while Android devices are popular in China, the region blocks access to the official Android Market, hence the need to run third-party app repositories.

The Android platform is open, unlike Apple’s iOS, which can only download apps from the Apple App Store, unless the device is jailbroken. As such, Android developers have a wide array of choices in terms of developer ecosystem, although this has also led to the proliferation of malware in the platform. Likewise, additional marketplace options further add to Android fragmentation, if not for the device and user interface, but the application sources.