Nintendo Now Officially Owns 100% Of Monolith Soft

Sweet! Can't wait to see what's next from them! Xenoblade is my favourite RPG series.

That aside, I wonder if Nintendo will be able to use the Xenoblade engine for Pokemon or Star Fox now.

I mean so long as the founders and creatives still remain at the company then I don't see this as a bad thing. Although I do wonder why the founders sold their 4% share

Anyway, I'm sure this wont affect the company's operations much. I think its fair to say MonoSoft have truly come into their own since that initial 80% buyout in what could be said to be one of the better acquisitions in gaming

they should buy fromsoft

Good news imo, this means Xenoblade is 100% owned by Nintendo, best developers in gaming in my opinion, this does mean through that any Xenogears remake or Xenosaga would have to be consulted by Nintendo first tho.

I'm sure those last four percent cost enough to ensure an ample pension plan for the gentleman founders. ^^

@martynstuff
I don't think the reasoning for the sale is much more technical than the founders all pushing 60, and having earlier this year celebrated the studio's 25th anniversary.

I'd imagine they feel ready to pull back a bit, and let a younger generation and Nintendo management take over more of the daily operations.

Awesome.
Can't wait for F Zero Xenoblade Chronicles

They should have purchased Rare. We would still be getting Banjo Kazooie, Conker's Bad Fur Day and Donkey Kong 3D games if they did but instead Banjo Kazooie has been wasted under Microsoft when it could have been one of Nintendo's ongoing franchises like Kirby.

Amazing news, Monolith Soft are up there with the big boys IMO. Nintendo please get them to help Gamefreak out or even better, make Monolith Soft lead devs on Pokemon.

I was always under the assumption that Monolith was owned by Nintendo, so this was a surprise to me. I'm glad they are fully under the Big N's wings now, however.

@xenobladexfan Square Enix owns Xenogears and Bandai Namco owns Xenosaga. Nintendo would have to go through them to do anything with those games.

Beat that Microsoft. Not another Rare-disaster ☺️

Rareware was my favourite studio back in the SNES and even more N64 period. I cried when I saw that Nintendo was no more their "owner" (they weren't, only 49%).
But even if I am a big fan of Nintendo, they mistreated Rare, their jewel.
Critisizing what they did with their platformer games (the best for me in that period, and for 10 years), not supporting Banjo-Tooie (my favourite), modifying Dinosaur Planet, "destroying" Conker (for the best !? I would like to have Twelve Tales too).
Honestly, Rare was looking for other partners at that time. The Stamper brothers were the gods, but they left videogame early after that. Owning Rare without Stamper Bros. is not the same thing as owning them in the golden era.
They maybe would have give the IP to other (like microsoft do : Battletoads, Killer Instinct, and Perfect Dark on X Box One/series aren't made by Rare...).
I dream of having Stamper Brothers, and still all their legendary musicians working on their titles (but it's easier for that part).
If Switch had games from the golden Era of Rare...my God !
But we can say that with other franchises that disappear (F-Zero / Starfox/Pilotwings/1080°/Wave Race/Excite...Bike XD, etc...Donkey Kong !!!)

It was only a matter of time, now bring out the fizz!🍾🥂

Yaay for Nintendo?

Best purchase ever. Xenoblade came to fruition at the time when FF started to lose it's way IMO.

Wizards of open world design that doesn't feel like rinse, repeat. Can't wait for the updated X.

Now is the opportunity for Nintendo to better integrate Monolith, which has three teams, of which are two support teams (one in Kyoto, one in Tokyo). As Takahashi, I would transfer these two support teams to EPD, because they mainly work on EPD games.

I would celebrate, but does this really make a difference? Honest question, I don't understand anything about how this stuff works at all.

Edit: And I think in this case it's okay to feel nice about this because Monolith was for all intents and purposes already a first-party studio, so if anything this might mean more stability for them? And Nintendo isn't well known for closing down studios left-and-right after acquiring them...

I really wish Nintendo would just bite the bullet and purchase Retro Studios, HAL Laboratory, Intelligent Systems, Good Feel, Game Freak, and the rest of their really close development studios that work almost exclusively for them. In this day and age where corporations keep making acquisitions, Nintendo needs to protect their assets from these poachers.

As others have said, it's a shame Nintendo never purchased Rare when they had the chance. It's also a shame they let AlphaDream die, so who knows what the future of Mario & Luigi will be--if it even has a future now that Sony is poised to acquire its developer. Next Level Games was a worthwhile purchase for the Big N, but why stop there?

I'm not saying Nintendo should buy out all these random studios they have little to no involvement with. But these are purchases that just make all the sense in the world from a business standpoint. Protect what you have, before somebody else snatches them up and steals your talented employees--only to lay them off shortly thereafter because they don't know how to properly manage.

They let Rare to be purchased by Microsoft because at that time (GameCube era) Rare was only the shadow of the old good golden Rareware. If you see any video in youtube - I think in gamexplain - you will understand that this choice was correct. It's like Microsoft owned a sunken ship instead of a goldmine. Nintendo should have purchased Rare from the beginning but they obviously didn't know what would happen in the future. So, this time with Monolith I believe again is a wise move to not have again the same result.

This is fantastic news. My two favourite developers. I'm sure that final 4% cost Nintendo a pretty penny, but it'll be worth it.

@Not_Soos Boy, do I have some good news for you in regards to Nintendo buying Retro Studios. Take a seat because it's gonna blow your mind

@Poco_Lypso just no.

@Shepdawg1 I was thinking, that with Xenogears, Nintendo should hire Square Enix to make a Remaster in similar graphics as Star Ocean - The Second Story R, with newly remastered music too.

I would be happy with raw ports of the Xenosaga trilogy, as those games still look visually impressive.

Another thing I thought was fascinating, is the fact that Tetsuya Takahashi, has been developing games for over 35 years, he started on Ys series in 1989.

@Not_Soos I think they do actually own Retro. Not sure about stakes in the others.

Missed opportunity by Nintendo IMO was Factor 5.

96% felt like such an awkward amount to own anyway so this makes total sense

@Not_Soos Nintendo's owned Retro ever since the release of Metroid Prime.

@Pillowpants They were already owned by Nintendo. Just not completely owned until now.

@Arkay @Duncanballs @martynstuff

Ah, my bad. Makes sense why Retro hasn't gone under after 10 years of not releasing a game, then. Someone has to pay those employees who have still been coming into work every day. That further illustrates why they really should have bought AlphaDream, before they went bankrupt, though.

They're a top three Nintendo studio for me. Xenoblade 3 was an INCREDIBLE game, and even their most flawed older releases are still ambitious and imaginative as heck.

Definitely one of the best acquisitions in the industry to date, given how well they work together.

Fantastic news. They are a powerhouse developer and have been crucial in many Nintendo games development on the Switch.

The founders are getting close to retirement. They're probably cashing out now because we'll hear the first retirement announcement around new years

Good stuff. Treat them well

I'M REALLY FEELING IT

Now they can make an open world Nintendo JRPG w/ Link & Zelda teaming up w/ Mario & Peach and various other Nintendo IP along the way.

Basically just remake Subspace Emmissary in the XCX engine. You know you want it.

Whatever happened to Platinum Games?
They were pretty good for a while!

@rjejr Subspace was so good. I always thought they should've done a Kid Icarus game like that.

@Not_Soos My theory is that most of AlphaDream's debt was to Nintendo.

So are people going to stop referring to them as a separate company now?

Xenoblade Chronicles has become such a Nintendo mainstay that it makes so much sense.

Does this mean we could be seeing the departure of Tetsuya Takahashi and other founders soon? Without the last 4%, there isn’t really any threads to tether them down.

It’s very common practice to see the departures of founders etc. soon after when their shares being bought out. They could be moving on or just retiring. Monolith and anything Xeno would not be Xeno without Takahashi.

Welp. This isn’t good, and I don’t get why people are celebrating it. There’s a high chance most monolith employees will be a support team.

@Daniel36
100% this!
My dream Nintendo project at this point.

I'm really feelin' this.

@VoidofLight they've been a support team on several titles including the last two open-world Zelda games

O’ joyous day, at last! I’m so excited to see how the next Xenoblade game will look now.

They bought them out during the Wii era. How is this news?

@JR150 nintendo could use breath of the wild engine for pokemon and did not used...

@Poco_Lypso as much as I would love for Nintendo to own FromSoft, or even for the Switch to get more FromSoft games, I just don't think the support is there from the fanbase.

I think Nintendo fans had a chance to prove they wanted more FromSoft games when they released DS1 remastered on the Switch in 2018, unfortunately the game had some bugs and performance issues out the gate and the reviews basically slammed the game, they never adjusted it when the game was fixed about a month or two later.

It's now easily one of the best 3rd party games on the Switch, but you wouldn't know that by looking at how much attention it got.

Yeah I doubt the game even sold 100k units, probably killed any chance we'll ever have of ever seeing Elden Ring on a Nintendo console.

@VoidofLight this really isn't anything new and I don't believe it's really a bad thing either lol, they've been a support team for close to a decade now, they were on both Zelda games.

They'll still make their own games clearly, as they just released a 3rd game not long ago, unfortunately I do agree with you about this not being a great thing, just not in the same area lol.

They made one good game, that was Xenoblade 1, you might be able to make a solid argument for Chronicles X too, but unfortunately the rest of their games are quite lackluster if you ask me, they are a talented team though, but better as a support team, they might do well with other games but their Xenoblade games are not really great anymore, they're a niche title that not many people play.

@Reztobi its a third party game, that was 10 years old at the time. chances are some switch owners alr played the game and didnt wanna double dip. but ye, its a bit more niche than other games on nintendo consoles.
but, if nintendo owned fromsoft... that could be lucrative...

@Baker1000 Nintendo is probably going to make them a full on support studio though.

It will be really cool if all of their games made it over to Switch²!!!!

"The home of Xenosaga"

God I'd love to see updated versions of all those PS2 games!! They looked great then and would look better now. They really pushed the PS2 hard too.

*fingers crossed

@VoidofLight They're going from 96% to 100% ownership. Nintendo already had de facto ownership over Monolith Soft since 2007. Nothing changes here.

Just don't become Embracer or Activision or UBIsoft. Make sure there is innovations not speculations and fallout.

@Reztobi finally someone else feels it. I loved the first Xenoblade and enjoyed X for everything except the story. But the next two games have felt so soulless. Xenoblade 1 had the perfect balance of open areas and points of interest rather than the massive swaths of nothing that came after. I keep hearing 3 has an amazing story yet I was mashing through cutscenes after five hours because I couldn't take another overwrought stretch of bog standard characters babbling about the same exact things and taking five minutes to give five words of predictable exposition. Hopefully they get their mojo back in the next lap.

This can only end badly.