Nintendo plans for growth include "acquiring dev companies," pursuing more non-gaming avenues, and growing Nintendo Accounts

Things are going incredibly well for Nintendo right now, but unsurprisingly, the company doesn’t plan to coast from here on out. Nintendo has instead highlighted 3 areas in which they plan to aggressively move in order to keep the momentum going.

Nintendo has shared supplementary materials from their Q2 2025/2026 fiscal year report, and it includes a bit more insight into how the company intends to keep the positive results flowing. According to Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa, the 3 main investment areas for Nintendo are game development, non-game entertainment and Nintendo Accounts.

There are three main investment areas (to strengthen our business foundation):

"First is strengthening game development. We will work to strengthen the internal game development organization within the Nintendo group. This includes initiatives such as acquiring development companies to make them subsidiaries and augmenting our development facilities, and the construction of Corporate Headquarters Development Center, Building No. 2 (tentative name).

Second is building software assets in non-game entertainment. Taking into account the success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, we will allocate funds to more actively pursue business opportunities that have an affinity with our game business, including but not limited to movies.

Third is the foundation for maintaining and expanding our relationships with consumers. We will utilize funds to maintain and expand our touchpoints with consumers, centered on the Nintendo Account system."

https://gonintendo.com/contents/54629-nintendo-plans-for-growth-include-acquiring-dev-companies-pursuing-more-non-gaming

I'm mixed feelings on this. While I think this is inevitable, I would still prefer third parties to be as independent as possible

So far leaning as negative, but not totally negative because eveyrbody else is also doing this so it's more a industry-problem than a Nintendo-problem

It is just annoying because it would mean that those games probably stay on Nintendo devices, exactly what gamers don't want anymore. 

Secondly, chasing growth continiously will potentially harm the consumer.

Hate it. I especially don't like when Nintendo does it because they don't grow the profile of the developers they acquire/has exclusive deals with.

Yeah, I never support consolidation. I understand the desire from Nintendo, especially given the fact that most non-indie 3rd parties skip Nintendo consoles and the rest of the industry is pushing acquisitions, but I will always advocate for expansion instead of consolidation.

In some circumstances it could be fine, like buying dev teams that would otherwise be shuttered, or buying a small indie and giving them a much bigger budget, but as a general rule, nah. I like what they did with Platinum, where they partnered with them to fund a game without buying the studio. I would be fine with more of that.

This. I can see the benefits a company like Level-5 would get from being under Nintendo administration but kind of fucked up if they have to go back to be another Nintendo studio after their recent success post 3DS era. I support exclusives but Level 5 worked hard to get their magic back by themselves.  

If they acquire Mercurysteam to be the main dev of 2D Metroid that would be ok tho and because I think there's no way Bayonetta 2 and 3 release outside the Switch then Platinum Games would also be another reasonable option. 

Assuming “acquisitions” refer to nothing more than something like their acquisition of Shiver Entertainment (a studio specialized in supporting third-party partners to port their releases to Nintendo systems) or Next Level Games, then I see no issue with this. Better to have studios such as Intelligent Systems, HAL, and Mercury under Nintendo’s wing than to risk a competitor (e.g. Microsoft purchasing Rare, Sony purchasing Bungie, etc.) swallowing and killing them.

Though I am curious: What is the difference between Nintendo having a strong relationship with a 2nd party developer versus acquiring them as a 1st party? For instance, allowing Bungie to work independently from Microsoft may have been a good instance of acquisition being avoided, whereas in the case of Alpha Dream, the studio went bankrupt without their acquisition, or in the case of Rare, saw a collapse in quality upon leaving Nintendo’s sphere.

Although I agree with this I also think there are lot of third parties out there who producing uninteresting content.

I don't see this as Nintendo buying SE and making Final Fantasy exclusive but more smaller developers who they can grow and work on their IP.

No, No, No. They did this to Retro. It is absolutely unbelievable that Retro has not done any original IP. Mercury Steam are talented developers that just need a major hit. I would hate to see them just be another grunt worker for Nintendo's IPs

To be fair, they would probably be safest under Nintendo because others acquiring them would probably be put on a project that fails and then shutdown ie blamed for the failed product.