Nintendo to Acquire Next Level Games Later This Year

Nintendo appears to be easing out of their usual to pull a more classic American game company move: acquiring third party studios. The gaming giant has recently acquired Next Level Games.

Nintendo recently announced the acquisition of the Vancouver based studio, a move possible by a decision from various directors and employees deciding to sell their shares in the company. Many other details, including the total sum for the acquisition, were not announced. Though the deal itself is expected to close on March 1, 2021.

Why Next Level Games?

Of all the studios for Nintendo to acquire, this one makes complete sense. Most recently known for developing Luigis Mansion 3, the studio has been working with Nintendo over a decade. They developed Mario Strikers, Wii Punch Out, and Metroid Prime: Federation Force. Next Level Games has a proven track record of hit games and theyve treated the various Nintendo IPs very well when given the chance.

Even so, this is a strange move by Nintendo, purely due to its out of habit nature. The last time the company acquired a studio was in 2007 with Monolith Soft, who would go on to play a supporting development role in numerous hit games like Smash Bros Brawl, Splatoon, Pikmin 3, and the Xenoblade, Animal Crossing and Zelda franchises. If anything, this just highlights how much potential Nintendo believes Next Level Games has as a studio.

Dont expect any major changes from Nintendo or Next Level Games after this. Nintendo themselves stated that it would only have minor effects on the fiscal year. Either way, theres nothing to do but wait and see what they do.