Topic: Should Nintendo start buying third party studios?

I do think Nintendo needs a few more development teams. They came out strong with Switch, but then kinda lost momentum with consistent releases, even before COVID. I don't know what publisher I would want them to buy, they are already sitting on a huge pile of their own IPs. But they need a handful of extra development teams to thicken their release list.

I think Nintendo is mostly fine with their development studios, but a few more wouldn't hurt.

As far as teams that they've previously worked with, top of my list is MercurySteam. They've done a great job with Samus Returns and Dread and Metroid needs a dedicated studio so we don't have to suffer through all of these game droughts. And it sounds like Nintendo has plans for multiple 2D Metroid games in the future (which are highly likely to happen given Dread's sales success), so it'd be best to keep MercurySteam around to keep working on it. They've shown their talent and they really need to be protected to keep that relationship going.

It would be nice if they revived alpha dream.

I'm not sure I agree. Wii U still regularly put out games that made a profit, even if the console itself failed. BOTW only needed to sell 2 million to make a profit, and if Nintendo has made a more expensive game, I've not heard of it.

Nintendo seems to prefer contract work with other studios, but I think they need to start taking the idea of acquiring studios more seriously, especially when considering how their old partner Monster Games was acquired by iRacing and how both Sony and Microsoft have been snapping up some major studios like Insomniac, Bethesda, and Activision Blizzard. If I remember correctly, their latest financial report said they wouldn't rule acquisitions out despite the focus on growing their internal studios, but they've also stated that they're more interested in making acquisitions based on technology, and I can't think of many candidates there, aside from Velan Studios for their work on Mario Kart Live, and Niantic, which seems unfeasible despite their working relationship. They've already bought Next Level Games, but I think they need to go further considering how many of their games this generation have been outsourced - it might be complicated for them to try and get MercurySteam because they were already acquired by Nordisk Games, but I think they should at least try and snap them up, alongside Intelligent Systems, HAL, Camelot, Grezzo, Good-Feel, and maybe PlatinumGames, Arika, Velan, and WayForward (last one might be especially bold since their first full game developed with a Nintendo IP isn't even out yet)? Thunderful is also something I could maybe see happening, considering they own Bergsala, Nintendo's distributor in the Nordic companies, though I feel like it's more likely that they'll have them develop a game akin to Tarsier's work on The Stretchers, or Paladin's work on Good Job. I don't see them buying any company larger than Koei Tecmo, though.

@PikaPhantom I don’t personally agree that Nintendo needs to buy out HAL or Intelligent Systems, not unless there was a real threat of them either deciding to produce for other systems outside of Nintendo (excluding mobile) or are looked at for a buyout which would be unlikely. Developers that exclusively work for Nintendo can remain independent. The reason Next Levels were bought is because the owners wanted to sell and I can imagine there was real concern someone other than Nintendo could snap them up.

@AppleroseGrace Yeah I doubt there’s be any rush or emergency meetings, like Sony had. It also wasn’t going to affect Nintendo like it will Sony so again, they wouldn’t have needed to be quite so panicky. I’m sure Sony’s share price dropping so much also made meetings more rushed into action.

It's dramatically underreacting if Microsoft buys Activision and Bethesda so Nintendo buys Grezzo or MercurySteam. It's like the neighbours buying a Porsche so you buy Skoda to keep up with them. lol

I'd expect Nintendo to play it smarter and be more creative than simply be over paying for a company for the sake of it due to the lack of business strategy. If you actually think it through about the purpose of Microsoft buying these companies it's not just to collect companies. It's to boost the back catalogue for the online subscription, have more 1st party exclusives, have more IPs but these are all things Ninty can do without having to buy companies.

They should buy Sonic.

@TommyTendo You think they should buy sega? wile it would be cool, I don't think sega would let that happen, in my opinion, I don't think nintendo would actually do a lot with the Ip anyway.

@Snatcher I just would like to see what the Splatoon team or something could do with Sonic.
Splatoon was really fresh, so maybe they could make Sonic feel fresh as well.

I think if any of the studios @PikaPhantom mentioned, which Nintendo already work closely with are available they should buy them to protect their studio capacity.

@Jump makes an interesting point about the scale of the response, but I think there are smart ways to go about it. If you could find a handful of small/indie upcoming studios which they could invest in to grow their ability to make more games and create new IP that could pay off in the long run, i'm thinking studios like...

Aquiris in Brazil, makers of Horizon Chase Turbo and Wonderbox, they could base a Zelda Maker on Wonderbox and who knows what else they could do if you doubled the size of their team?

Hello Games have done some really interesting things with No Man Sky, what Nintendo exclusives could they come up with?

Also, SuperGiant Games (Hades), Playdead (Inside and Limbo), Team Cherry (Hollow Knight) and Studio MDHR (Cuphead) are all worth looking at, what could they all do with bigger teams?

@jump Nintendo’s likely to buy a company if they see there’s a real chance they are bought by someone, like with Next Level Games. I’m curious as how the $1 billion is being spent to help increase the internal development sizes.

Keeping in mind I know next to nothing about business - these are just my impressions as a consumer.

Should Nintendo go on a money-spending spree and snatch up large publishers, their studios and all of their IP (a la Microsoft)? Absolutely not. I don't think this is good practice for the industry as a whole, and is not a good image for Nintendo.

Should Nintendo acquire smaller developers (not publishers), particularly those that they have a good working relationship with, and that have largely produced Nintendo titles anyway? I don't see why not.

The latter could potentially be beneficial in bringing closer working relationships between the studios and Nintendo, and, assuming that Nintendo still allow the studios creative freedom, a lot of these studios could perhaps benefit from the extra financial security of being owned by Nintendo (maybe AlphaDream could've survived if it were a Nintendo subsidary).

@FragRed Yep, I'd rather see billions spent internally.

Promote the talent in the company already to designers and then hire loads of new code monkeys to up Nintendo’s own output whilst also ensuring there’s another generation that has the Nintendo magic. They got Splatoon from giving the younger developers something to do so more new IPs can be developed, you can get the prestige titles like Mario or Zelda be released quicker and there’s enough inactive franchises like Star Fox, 1080, Duck Hunt, Excitebike, Golden Sun etc that can be revived with these new teams.

Buying publishing companies and development studios isn't something Nintendo does all that often. Although...I would like to see Nintendo bailout Level-5, if for no other reason than my selfish desire to have a Switch port of Fantasy Life, lol. But no, Nintendo doesn't need to acquire anything immediately in response to MS's purchase of Activision Blizzard. Only Sony Ponies need to be concerned about missing out on some Activision Blizzard games that'll be exclusive to Game Pass in a couple or few years after the deal is finalized.

Honestly I think Nintendo is one of the last companies I'd want to see snapping up studios. At least with Microsoft there's a history of releasing on other platforms eg Ori, Minecraft, Psychonauts 2. And of course there are all the old Rare games that have made their way to NSO and the pretty broad support of PC. I mean, the way Microsoft behaves in this space I wouldn't be THAT surprised if we got Halo on the Switch. Would be a surprise for sure but far from the the craziest thing ever. But can you imagine even something like Bayonetta 2 on PC? Not a chance!

So yeah, I would much rather see Nintendo focus on their first party IP which is of course why we love Nintendo. If they can fund projects along the way from third parties that's also good, Bayonetta for example would be dead if not for Nintendo. So of course that sort of thing we want to see. But outright buying large studios? .... I don't think that's in our interests

With that said if it was between Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft buying up studios or someone like Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, Google? I'd rather Nintendo over them. But I'd still rather Microsoft over Sony and Nintendo

It would be interesting to look at how much has been spent on Retro Studios over the past 10 years and compare that to associated income.

For whatever reason, the conservative culture at Nintendo seems so protective, and to expand the business risks them having to loosen that protective grip.

Seeing how Rare has got on under Microsoft, does anyone think Nintendo has much regret over not doing that deal?

Studios seem to be at their best when they have to rely on themselves for survival. The gaming industry is littered with legends of fallen developers, once great but then sold out and fallen to apparent ruin.

I would love Nintendo to acquire some more classic IP and modernise them, but we've seen with Nintendo's own output, it doesn't seem to have the capacity and/or aspiration to do that.

And now we're in the remake/remaster era, there seems even less need for them to expand their IP library, cos they can barely put out Wii U ports fast enough for all of us buying them.

@skywake I'd say two things on that, I 100% agree with you on not wanting Amazon, Netflix, Facebook etc to come in and buy up major studios, that could be a disaster!

But I disagree on Microsoft being the preferred option, I think the days of Microsoft publishing games on other platforms is coming to an end, apart from a handful of exceptions. They want to create as many reasons as possible for people to sign up to Game Pass and if that means Psychonauts 3, Ori 3 etc being exclusive to Game Pass, I think they'll do it.

I agree with @Magician the Microsoft acquisition isn't something in its self Nintendo needs to respond to, but what it might lead to is something Nintendo need to be prepared for. If this leads to a battle between Sony and Microsoft with more consolidation there will need to be a response.

If Microsoft made the purchase because they were worried about another big tech company (Facebook? Apple?) buying Activision instead, then there is no reason those companies might not come back in for EA, Ubisoft, Take Two etc, which may require a response.

So, really what they need is cash and a list of targets to act upon if something major happens.

@FragRed Yeah, that's fair, even though I think the argument that they've been partners for so long and thus should be bought out to become first-party has validity as well. Intelligent Systems grew out of Nintendo hiring Toru Narihiro to port Famicom Disk System software to the NES ROM cartridges, even, and I think they're Nintendo's only second party partner that hasn't released anything outside of their work with the company after the relationship was established. HAL self-published Part Time UFO on mobile, Grezzo contributed to The Alliance Alive, Arc of Alchemist, and The Legend of Legacy, Camelot made We Love Golf! with Capcom after they began working with Nintendo (I wouldn't count their work prior to Mario Golf here since before then they hadn't worked with Nintendo), Good-Feel self-published Monkey Barrels and has another self-published game in the works, and Game Freak has put games on other platforms (most of their other partners have done quite a bit with other companies). Even if they're exceptions and not the norm, it may make buying out the companies more valuable. Next Level Games had already stated they would work with Nintendo exclusively from now on several years before they were acquired, too. Just some food for thought

And I agree that Nintendo shouldn't buy out any big companies unless it really comes to that. Just think it'd be smart to buy out some of their good partners and grow them as well

This is probably more true. If you buy the wrong company aka M$ ventures you could kill creativity rather then promote it. They should both align or be in good working company if this is to benefit both sides of the party-sometimes you might have to buy them for IP because they might have something that will be needed later and this is another reason they research and ask will this invest pay off.