Nintendo plans for growth include acquiring dev companies

[Cerebralbore101]

PAOerfulone said:

Nintendo's idea of acquiring devs, as based on past patterns, is very, VERY different from Sony and Microsoft's idea of acquiring devs.
When they bought Next Level Games, they had basically been an unofficial Nintendo studio at that point. They worked exclusively with Nintendo and only made games on their platform, so it made all the sense in the world when they were bought.
With Monolith Soft, their relationship with Bandai Namco had soured so much because they wanted to have creative freedom and BN wasn't willing to give it to them; Nintendo was. So, it made sense for them to become their subsidiary. Console exclusivity is a small price to pay for creative freedom for devs like Monolith Soft.
And even though they didn't buy Platinum Games outright, Nintendo was the only developer willing to publish Bayonetta 2 and give that series to a chance to continue at all. And it gave them a game/IP in their library that was noticeably different from their own and added some needed diversity.

Nintendo has never really been in the deep spending mode of acquiring studios like Sony, Microsoft, EA, and many other major publishers have. Whenever they DO make such an acquisition, it's usually smaller studios they already have close ties with and it makes more sense for both sides to be together than separate. And I see no reason to think how that approach will change with Switch 2.

I voted that I'm against 3rd party acquisitions but what you are describing here are 2nd party acquisitions. Nintendo buying up the Poke'mon Company and Gamefreak. Or Nintendo buying Rare, in the 90's. Or Nintendo buying a studio that was going to die are all fine. Here's the thing though...

1. Guerrilla Games hardly did anything before being bought by Sony in the PS2 era. They were then built up to be a fantastic studio over a decade of hard work.

2. Sony Santa Monica was founded by ex-Sony employees to make God of War (a PS2 exclusive) and eventually got bought by Sony. 

3. Many devs that made exclusive content for the PS1 like Insomniac and Naughty Dog were stuck making shovelware movie games in the Genesis/SNES era. Then Sony gave them money and coding libraries, and said "Go make whatever games you've dreamed of making. All we want in exchange is exclusive publishing rights". So it makes perfect sense for Sony to buy these type of studios after a 15-year partnership. 


This is in stark contrast to what Microsoft has done. They bought up Bethesda and Obsidian making the games of those devs console exclusives. They founded studios like The Initiative (which is the right way to get 1st party games), only to fire them (along with a whole bunch of other devs. Even devs like the Hi-Fi Rush devs that made an amazing game!).  There was a PS5 version of Starfield that was already in development that was cancelled. Thankfully, the failure of the Xbox Series caused Satya Nadella and investors to force Xbox to go full-on 3rd party. 

Anyway, I expect any acquisitions from Nintendo to be sensible (like most of Sony's). It's not anti-consumer to buy up a company who's primary output of games was already exclusives to your system. 

Last edited by Cerebralbore101 - on 05 November 2025