Nintendo Nintendo buys Next Level Games (Wii Punch Out, Luigi's Mansion 3, Metroid Prime: Federations)

[SaysWho?]

 

 

[crispy4000]

Nice, it's good they're locked in.  Good studio, and very anti-crunch too from what I remember.

[Ghost_MH]

Nintendo doesn't really seem to like keeping foreign studios as second party for long,. I don't know if they still have any second party studios left outside of Japan. Meanwhile, Intelligent Systems and HAL are still second party studio, 30+ years later.

[Zaku3]

Mario Strikers Switch.

[Brick]

That's a good buy. 

[crispy4000]

2 hours ago, Ghost_MH said:

Nintendo doesn't really seem to like keeping foreign studios as second party for long,. I don't know if they still have any second party studios left outside of Japan. Meanwhile, Intelligent Systems and HAL are still second party studio, 30+ years later.

 

Same with Camelot.

[Ghost_MH]

9 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

Same with Camelot.

 

That's my point. For Japanese devs, Nintendo seems ok with keeping that second party status for seemingly ever. If Nintendo hasn't bought IS or HAL after all these years, they never will. Same goes for Creature, but everything related to Pokemon is weird, so I try not to think about it too much. At least Camelot had worked with other companies in the past, even if that was like 20-30 years ago. I don't think Intelligent Systems has ever not worked tightly with Nintendo on anything.

[crispy4000]

That's alright until Nintendo decides it doesn't want to partner anymore.  RIP Alpha Dream.

[GameDadGrant]

Cool, but...almost kind of a waste of money? Seems like overall, NLG was pretty content just continuing to make games exclusively for Nintendo. Was it really necessary to buy them out?

 

This is *almost* on the same level as Playstation buying out Insomniac. Like, alright, nice. You got 'em locked in. But they were already pretty much were, so...why spend the cash? LOL

4 hours ago, Ghost_MH said:

Nintendo doesn't really seem to like keeping foreign studios as second party for long,. I don't know if they still have any second party studios left outside of Japan. Meanwhile, Intelligent Systems and HAL are still second party studio, 30+ years later.

 

Yeah. They partnered with RARE for nearly a decade, then sold. I feel they only had Silicon Knights as second party for maybe a handful of years. (though considering what that company ended up being like, maybe they dodged a bullet there, haha)

 

They still have NST and Retro, at least. And now NLG. *shrug*

 

[stepee]

I think just Nintendo having partners at all that they don’t own but pretty much make exclusive content for them for decades is more to do with Japanese business culture or something, I’m not sure how many American businesses are into that super long term. 

 

It’s good they bought them though, because it’s a good partnership and this helps avoid an Alpha Dream, who they should have bought imo and just managed more.

[BloodyHell]

2 hours ago, Ghost_MH said:

Nintendo doesn't really seem to like keeping foreign studios as second party for long,. I don't know if they still have any second party studios left outside of Japan. Meanwhile, Intelligent Systems and HAL are still second party studio, 30+ years later.

Pretty sure HAL just refuses to sell. Don't know about the others.

[Ghost_MH]

26 minutes ago, BloodyHell said:

Pretty sure HAL just refuses to sell. Don't know about the others.

 

Possibly, but I think @stepee is right here. Japanese business culture seems to be at play here. IS, Camelot, HAL, and to lesser extend Sora and Good-Feel are major Nintendo second party devs that pretty much hold the keys to some of their biggest franchises. They've all have a decade plus history with Nintendo. I think Monolith Soft might be the only Japanese dev they've actually outright bought. Am I missing anyone? I might be. Nintendo doesn't really buy up talent very often. It just seems that when they do, it's normally not a Japanese house.

[CastletonSnob]

I'd kill for a new Punch-Out game.

[TheLeon]

14 minutes ago, CastletonSnob said:

I'd kill for a new Punch-Out game.

Me too, but if it doesn’t come out on a 4K system, what’s the point? 

[SaysWho?]

17 hours ago, GameDadGrant said:

Cool, but...almost kind of a waste of money? Seems like overall, NLG was pretty content just continuing to make games exclusively for Nintendo. Was it really necessary to buy them out?

 

This is *almost* on the same level as Playstation buying out Insomniac. Like, alright, nice. You got 'em locked in. But they were already pretty much were, so...why spend the cash? LOL

 

Yeah. They partnered with RARE for nearly a decade, then sold. I feel they only had Silicon Knights as second party for maybe a handful of years. (though considering what that company ended up being like, maybe they dodged a bullet there, haha)

 

They still have NST and Retro, at least. And now NLG. *shrug*

 

 

This may explain things:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[SaysWho?]

If the developer is selling their shares, it makes sense to purchase them in this case so they can continue to make high-selling products based on their intellectual property.

 

In Insomniac's case, they indeed worked closely with Sony for over 20 years, but we also have to remember that they experimented by themselves last gen as well. They worked with Microsoft on Sunset Overdrive. They released Song of the Deep and mobile games, they released two VR games in conjunction with Oculus.

 

It makes sense for Sony to have a studio that can make well-received VR games for their PSVR system, a studio that can make a mega-million seller in Spider-Man (which did not sell this well when it was multiplatform), and to have another studio under its belt that can stagger big releases such as Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch, Santa Monica, Guerrilla, and now Bend. And for the price they bought Insomniac, it was a steal.