While there are multiple studios experiencing the proverbial development hell as they struggle to push out titles on time (or at all) other studios have been having a far easier time of the current pandemic that has seemed to shake up almost everything across a wide variety of industries.
Nintendo announced that they have acquired Next Level Games: the developers of Luigi’s Mansion, Punch-Out Wii, and Mario Strikers among others.
This is the first acquisition in the past thirteen years when Nintendo opted to purchase Monolith Soft; with the acquisition, Next Level Games is going to be a first-party development studio for the Nintendo Switch, rumored to have a pro device in the workings that will offer 4K resolution and far more power than Nintendo has frankly been known for in the past decade.
The acquisition is scheduled to close on March 1, 2021, after approval from all invested parties; shares of Next Level Games are currently held in its entirety by directors and employees, a statement from Nintendo reads.
Nintendo is planning to purchase the developers behind Luigi’s Mansion 3, Next Level Games. pic.twitter.com/P3OZII9J5o
— IGN (@IGN) January 6, 2021
The Canadian development studio based in Vancouver was founded originally in 2002, where they offered their first title for the now-defunct publisher Midway Games with NHL Hitz Pro: a title that released across the platforms of GameCube, Xbox, and PlayStation 2.
Shortly after that release came Super Mario Strikers for the GameCube in 2005 and a reprisal of the title with Mario Strikers Charged for the Wii in early 2007.
More than half of the titles Next Level Games has released were Nintendo exclusives, with ten out of a total of fourteen titles released as a Nintendo exclusive, and only two of those fourteen titles produced coming to platforms other than a Nintendo one.
One title, Super Mario Spikers was canceled in 2009 as leaked in 2014; one of three canceled titles the studio has leaked over the years.
The studio is clearly competent as displayed in a host of releases over the past two decades, roughly, and Nintendo securing the studio for first-party releases upcoming bodes well for Nintendo’s inevitable consistent releasing of platform-exclusive titles that readily use the strength of their IPs curated over the past three decades across multiple mediums.
While it’s unlikely (extremely, depending on whose opinion you seek) there is a possibility that the acquisition would fall through, yet with Next Level Games’ history of working closely with Nintendo as they used IPs from the Japanese corporation, the plausibility is next to zero.
