AlphaDream, the Japanese game development studio behind the Mario & Luigi RPG series and several other titles on Nintendo platforms, has filed for bankruptcy.
The news comes from Yahoo! Japan, which reports that the company's revenue has been disappointing as of late with development costs effectively putting it into something of a crisis. The report notes that as of March 2018, AlphaDream was 465 million yen in debt (which equates to roughly £3.5 million / $4.3 million USD).
A partnership with Nintendo saw AlphaDream release plenty of games across its systems, with the Mario & Luigi franchise being the most notable. Titles included Superstar Saga, Partners in Time, Dream Team, Paper Jam, and Bowser's Inside Story (and the recent 3DS re-release). It's currently unclear what will happen with the series going forward.
Speaking of that recent 3DS release, former senior editor at Game Informer, Imran Khan, says a source revealed that the game's sales were so poor that it actually had a knock-on effect for Nintendo's plans with the 3DS. Early sales of the game were indeed disappointing.
Naturally, our thoughts are with everyone personally affected by the news.
[source headlines.yahoo.co.jp, via kotaku.com]
Comments 102
This is unfortunate news. Hopefully, they might find a way to pull themselves out of bankruptcy.
Maybe remaking their older games for the dwindling 3DS community was a bad idea.
Wow, that's terrible to hear. AlphaDream had talented developers and graphic designers, I hope they can find work elsewhere.
Maybe they'll wind up at Nintendo?
I hate to think that this was a result of releasing a new game for the 3DS at the end of its lifespan, I actually played the game and it was good.
Maybe they will now bring back a proper paper Mario!
I very much hope Nintendo continues the series with the people of AlphaDream...
This is awful to hear - I really hope they can pull themselves out of it.
I hate the idea that they think that the mario and Luigi series is on the decline due to the recent 3DS remakes. It was just the wrong games at the wrong time. I think a brand new switch one would actually sell very well
Now is the time for Nintendo to buy them cheap.
We need a Mario and Luigi RPG on Switch.
Wow, this is... unexpected. Sad to hear too. I didn't realise they were in such a dire situation.
I wonder if the axed future 3DS plans included a M&L Partners in Time remake? Bummer.. Sad to see them go bankrupt, I enjoyed the M & L games, but they started to get pretty shallow on the 3DS.
This would never have happened if they'd made their last game for the Switch
@Scottwood101 exactly. Maro RPG is a must have game each gen. How the F... did they exlude this time i'm wondering. Such a great game
@Scottwood101 looks like they didn't have the manpower to make HD games and not enough cash to sustain a bigger team
@TJWorks Is that why the more recent 3DS versions sold so poorly? Because everyone was transitioning to the Switch from the 3DS? Paper Jam only sold about 1 million, but that was late 2015/early 2016 before the Switch. SS 3DS only sold like 70k, so BiS 3DS was even worse than that. Youch!
I do hope Nintendo picks them up. I loved their games, though later titles did a bit too much with some of the gimmicks.
They should have released the games on Switch.
This is terrible news. And the series even went out on a dudd (Paper Jam wasn't terrible, but it might be the weakest still). Might this be the end of the Mario and Luigi series, or Mario rpg's in general? Please no!!
Wow, they really should have bought the remakes to switch.
Or maybe not even bothered with which was essentially the same games especially the DS games as the originals still work on 3DS
EVERYBODY That is sad about this should have bought bowser story × minions.
That’s a real shame, it’s never nice to see this kinda thing. I hope the staff find somewhere to go, they’re the real driving force behind what made those games great.
This is terrible news! Hopefully, they'll still find a way to get out of this terrible situation.
It's sadly ironic that the 3DS version of Bowser's Inside Story contributed to this, because that game is probably their masterpiece and should be included in any conversation about the greatest RPGs on Nintendo systems.
I feel like the people complaining about the remakes not being on the switch doesn’t seem to realise making a new switch engine would have cost far to much for a company on the verge of bankruptcy so they put it on the 3ds instead
@Dizzymario A new engine, higher resolution assets...
I have to agree: Producing Switch remakes would have been way too costly for them.
Aww no... no, no, no. I really hope there will still be a future for the M&L series and for its devs as well, I love these games so much.
@jobvd I'm not everybody but for what it's worth, I did. I bought every single M&L release, remake or not, including this one.
400 million odd yen, isn't that like $3.50?
This must be that Nintendo didn't pay them enough because they have developed many successful and high-quality games for them. Outrageous.
Seriously what?! The M&L titles I own are all hilarious fun games. This is very very sad. Hopefully the big N can step in and sort this mess out.
3ds dies instantly with switch. I didn't consider the Mario Luigi series big like the other series to sell well enough.
Of course M&L failed, they threw one very bad game (the one with Paper Mario and the Toads I don’t even remember its name) and TWO remakes no one asked for instead of just releasing a trilogy/re-releasing the original DS games.
Those were bad decisions and I see why the company got in trouble. Nintendo is the one to blame here.
Oh God no... please, Nintendo, do whatever possible to save them! #SaveAlphaDream
@neufel Nintendo was funding their games so if they didn’t have the manpower it was because Nintendo did not give them a large enough budget for HD titles
It’s possible that Nintendo keeps them afloat, though
Guess I'll finally have to get paper Jam. It's the only one that for some reason i never got around to playing. love this series though. Sad that's probably it for marios RPG career. It's been fun.
Thats too bad, was hoping for re-releases of those games (or should I say re-re-releases) on switch. Bummer.
There's a very simple solution to this, Nintendo should buy the company and that's it.
While I did buy the Bowser's Inside Story remake despite owning the original, I did at the time of its announcement find it strange how quickly they also pushed it out after Superstar Saga's remake. I thought SSS getting remade was a good idea since there was no way to play on the 3DS but BIS still had the original version fully playable and accessible for a fraction of the price of the remake...
I love this series and Alphadream in my opinion are great developers so I hope Nintendo tries to help the studio if they can. Having 4 Mario & Luigi titles on 3DS was a lot... It's a shame they didn't potentially have the resource to push out Bowser's Inside Story + on the Switch, even digitally.
Sad news. So many good memories with the first 3 Mario & Luigi games. Especially Superstar Saga!
Well...I bought and enjoyed both M&L remakes. But the market is getting more and more demanding, always so vocal about what "should" be made and what price is "right." BIS+BJJ fixes ALL of my problems with the original BIS and adds an enjoyable side mode, all wrapped up in a lovely audio/visual upgrade. I'll grant 3DS was probably the wrong platform in 2019, but it's a solid game and worth the asking price IMO.
I find it odd that people are trying to blame Nintendo for this when there really is no one to blame. AlphaDream was probably hurting long before Bowser's Inside Story remake and them putting it on the 3DS probably came down to cost. As a financially struggling company would not simply be able to take on the risk of a Switch title as that would mean a brand new engine, assets, larger staff, more salaries, and longer development cycles.
Nintendo may had even asked at the start of development if they wanted to do a Switch or 3DS game and probably came to the decision with AlphaDream that the 3DS would be the least costly and may help them get a larger profit. It could be they may had not wanted to do a Switch game in fear of going bankrupt in mid-development. However with shifting markets it did not turn out that way. It's the nature of the industry that good studios will go bankrupt due to no fault of any party and it came down to just bad luck. Wrong game at the wrong time despite the quality of that title.
Now bankruptcy may not be the end for AlphaDream. As an example even Marvel Comics went bankrupt at one point. They are right now trying to find someone to help take on the debt and Nintendo may help them or they may not. It's now just a waiting game.
They didn’t really evolve. Sad to see they had to declare bankruptcy though.
@Stuffgamer1 I actually wanted to buy it! But couldn't afford it at the time. I may actually do it now! Maybe buying a new copy will help in a small way, but it sends a message to Nintendo that I did love AlphaDream and want to see them make more games.
This is sad news. I must admit I assumed they were owned by Nintendo.
I do think they were maybe too reliant on the m&l series - maybe if they branched out a little they might have had more success? Eggs in one basket and all. I know it's a risk but I was a long time fan of the series and I just got fatigue. They were great but there was only so many I could play.
Hopefully Nintendo will bail out or at least employ some of the talent.
I like the M&L series on GBA and DS, but the 3DS titles were a step down imo. Hopefully Nintendo can save them, cuz after FE3H, that dev is gonna be busy making more Fire Emblem titles and probably not as many Paper Mario games. Give that series to Alpha Dream to work on
Hopefully their employees will get hired to work directly at Nintendo. It would be a great shame to see such talent disappear.
Time for Nintendo to "go Microsoft" on them, then, after Sony did the very same with Insomniac Games, know what I'm sayin'?
Now if they had released Bowser's inside story on the Switch, they'd probably be singing a different tune.
Well, this is sad. But not thatc surprising. The two remakes they put out were pretty pointless, especially Bowser's Inside Story. Don't get me wrong, it's a great game, but when you can play the exact game same on the same system just with a slightly lower resolution and a slightly different spritework, what's even the point?
Anyway, let's look at the bright side: Nintendo said they were keeping the Paper Mario series as experimental games, because why have two different Mario RPG series' at the same time? Now we have a chance to finally get a real sequel to the first two Paper Mario games, which are absolutely some of the best games ever created, no questions asked. The first one is easily the best game on the N64, and the second one is the best game on the GameCube. In my opinion, at least.
This is terrible news, i love Alphadream's games, i really, really hope Nintendo steps in and buys them out, but they didn't when CiNG went bankrupt so i'm not hopeful, would be a real shame if this was the end of Mario RPGs.
@Discostew It's not the only reason. I didn't buy either remake because of the Switch transition (only Metroid managed to get me back over) but the BiS remake I already had playable on 3DS via BC. Why would I buy a remake for it? Honestly, I'd just played through Superstar Saga again on Wii U at a much lower price point as well. Unfortunately, I don't think the new mode caught anyone's attention for those games, and the reviews didn't help.
I wish AlphaDream made a big home console RPG, like Super Mario RPG or Paper Mario, but that dream's over.
The poorest decision was to remake a DS game for the 3DS instead of bringing it to the Switch. I mean, all potential 3DS buyers already had it.
It was not an old game at all, and it didn't have the time to grow into a classic. The 2 biggest reasons why people want a remake!
Most of the fanbase still owned the original and weren't fond of buying the same game just with an added mode. It was just Nintendo's dumb idea to extend the 3DS's life with a remake nobody's asked for.
@Nessmissesmum
Talk about priorities...
Remaster them, similar to Links Awakening, put on Switch, or a new entry (Paper Mario - TTYD2?) - they'd make a load of money
You'd think Nintendo would help them out given that their failure was largely to do with the console generation change.
This is really sad news. Hopefully they can work through this and keep themselves together and keep developing new games, because I really like the Mario and Luigi series.
On another note, I’m surprised anyone is surprised that the Bowser’s Inside Story remake sold poorly. They released a remake of a game that was already playable on 3DS for a full $40 price tag at a time when the 3DS was declining in sales week over week after already being effectively replaced by the Switch. It was a poor choice of game to remaster and a terrible time to release it.
Perhaps Nintendo will step in and either buy out the company outright, or hire on much of it's staff to work for them directly.
Hopefully Nintendo can step in and pick up some talented developers. Last year they were hiring for what seemed like PS4 and Switch development. I wonder if they couldn’t get that off the ground.
Be a shame if the remake of BIS killed them, though it was an utterly bizarre idea in the first place.
@Nessmissesmum Different developer
Were the sales for BiS+ really that surprising? Sounds like they had some unreasonable expectations, given how every single news article or review on the planet highlighted how it was a random choice of title to remake.
I generally don’t like bigger companies gobbling up smaller ones but I hope Nintendo buys them and turns them into a subsidiary or something so they can keep making awesome games.
Now that that's out of the way, make an SMRPG-like or make a Paper Mario in the vein of PM1. None of the cringe TTYD/SPM mess or the recent gimmicky junk.
Aw, that’s a real shame. I loved the Mario & Luigi games. It’s sad to hear about this news. I feel like this wouldn’t happen if M&LBIS Remake would of release on the Switch instead of the 3DS. Well, it’s still a shame.
R.I.P AlphaDream
2000-2019
Quite sad but it seem that the last two remake really weren't profitable enough to deal with their debt. I was able to nab them when I went to Japan this April at extremely low price of 1000 Yen or so up brand new at the various game stores when some 2nd hand 3DS game were still at 3000 yen up
Really sad to hear, that BiS re-release must have really done them in. Hopefully Nintendo will get another developer to continue the Mario & Luigi series.
That's too bad, but you could tell 3DS game sales have fallen off a cliff the last couple of years. Once Pokemon moved over to Switch with LGP&E and Sword and Shield this year, the writing was officially on the wall for the handheld. The Switch Lite was the final nail in the coffin for the 3DS as far as a supported platform.
At this point 3DS is basically a budget/entry level system which still has a nice library of games on it, and Nintendo can probably keep it on life support a little while longer with some additional budget titles but it's going to disappear from most retailers sooner than later if it hasn't already.
This is really sad. Mario RPG has been one of my most favorite series since the SNES. Paper Mario became something "other" than an RPG specifically because M&L carried the Mario RPG torch. If Alpha Dream folds, then there's no one carrying the Mario RPG banner anymore. Either Paper Mario gets fixed back to RPG (which seems unlikely), or it's a dead deal.
These games were remarkably fun on 3DS. I was looking forward to eventually getting another.
M&L games were always among my top 10 highlights for each handheld console. I was really waiting for the first one in HD for Switch. Maybe some other developer can continue their work.
But if not and with the current state Paper Mario is in...
Thanks for Mario RPG's 1997-2019!
If this was caused by the poor sales of Bowser Jr.’s Journey, then I feel like this is entirely Nintendo’s fault for continuing to push their developers to make 3DS games well after its fate was sealed.
Really saddening news. I haven't finished a Mario and Luigi game yet, but they're generally great fun. Hopefully Nintendo can step in and either save AlphaDream or salvage some of their employees, because I'd hate to see the series die.
Doesn't surprise me. Now you know why the Paper Mario games are now what they are.
@ALinkttPresent it's highly unlikely that game did them in. Considering Nintendo published the title (so probably paid a good chunk of development) and that most of the assets, sound, level design and engine was already done it was a low risk title. Even if it bombed it would had been hardly a dent financially for Nintendo and in theory AlphaDream. There were clear issues with the books before the game came out as 465 million yen is not a small amount that a single 3DS game can do. This is not an indi game where it's all or nothing this had Nintendo money behind it.
We won't know what caused this until either insiders speak out or it goes to bankruptcy court. Odds are my bet is this was more an issue with the internal management of AlphaDream more than a Nintendo twisting their hands to develop the game. As Nintendo does not own them so they can't force them to make a game they don't think will do well and ruin their company.
So remaking a relatively recent game on a console that can play that game already, with few changes besides an extra mode, near the end of the life cycle of said console, while people are more interested in a newer console, is a bad business choice...?
Shocking.
I don't think I could have woken up to worse news...
NoOoooOoooOooo!!!!!!!! 😭
This is horrible news. Why didn’t Nintendo just buy the studio years ago? They make great games.
remaking bowser's inside story was unnecessary, superstar saga was on the wii u too right?
i'm a fan of the series, dream team even had me shed a tear and i loved the dream world battles
Did they get in debt trouble for lack or sales of Nintendo-published games? Do publishers not cover development costs?
Any judgment towards Alpha for the Bowser's Inside Story 3DS fail is completely misplaced. The game was available as a DS cart fully playable on a 3DS system at less than half the price. 3DS sales were plummeting. THEY HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS.
Independent of all this, I'm agnostic about remaking a modern game that had no technical faults. Nintendo dropped the ball here... but if they had just made the game for the switch, sales for it and profit would have been an order of magnitude higher.
This is all so absurd that I'm becoming conspiratorial about Nintendo sabatoging their Mario RPG line because Miyamoto believes "Mario shouldn't have a story."
Sad news indeed. I have yet to play any of the M&L games but have picked up both 3DS remakes as I've wanted to get into the series for some time and have heard good things. That said, the fact that Bowser's Inside Story was already perfectly playable on the 3DS via backwards compatibility made the decision for a remake a baffling one. I'm not surprised they lost money there.
I hope Nintendo picks up the talent from AlphaDream, or at the very least the employees are able to get into other areas of the industry.
This is sad to hear, they have some talent and successes over the years and the their M&L bowser inside story remake was a solid game that didn’t succeed probably duo to the decline of the 3ds sales
They are an average size studio with a lot of support for Nintendo and their debt is quite small in big cooperation numbers
Nintendo should buy their debt (which usually cost much less than the debt itself) and add them to their studios, considering Sony and Microsoft are gearing up for next generation, Nintendo should probably do some of their own picking and this can be a cheap way to buy a talented studio that will easily earn its investment back
Sad if Nintendo doesn't save them with all the cash they have.
@Muddy_4_Ever I don't think they got half a billion yen into debt over one failed game. If I were to guess, it's that they chose to make that game because it was something they could do very cheaply, which they needed because they were nearly half a billion yen in debt.
It seems that pretty much all they worked on were M&L titles, but for whatever reason they haven't made anything but remakes on a dying legacy console since Paper Jam, years ago. Not actually having new products to sell is certainly what broke them.
The question though, is, were they thrown to the wolves by Nintendo? M&L is really all they were making. If Nintendo never greenlit a new M&L project, they were effectively killed off by Nintendo. Alternatively they maybe only knew how to develop for DS and found themselves unable to handle Switch.
@NEStalgia I'll admit to being selfish, lol. I've always gotten a sense Nintendo has nominal love for M&L and it's my favorite series. Hence my anger...
What held me back from buying their last games was the lack of 3D effect!
Well Crap. I loved their games.
@neufel 46 people is a standard team size
Ultimately, Alpha Dream was one of the companies most at risk from Nintendo's transition to full-HD development with the Switch.
> They are a tiny studio with under 50 employees
> They have no HD game development experience outside of some irrelevant mobile games
> They work with a franchise that isn't super popular and doesnt generate that much revenue
> Their last game sold absolutely terrible (though I'd blame Nintendo for making them work on 3DS remakes well after the 3DS's prime).
@Tantani
46 is most definitely not a standard team size for developing HD RPGs on the Switch, which is what Alpha Dream would have done if they were still alive.
@NEStalgia 4.3 million dollars debt is quite small, game development cost much more than that usually
But they didn’t have enough money to do more than a remake apparently....
Nintendo should pick them up
I can easily see the M&L series being discontinued as a "DS era eccentricity" at this point. Unfortunately. I loved those games. The formula was fantastic, and they were way better than what Paper Mario became.
Our only hope now is a return of Paper Mario to it's RPG sensibilities or a new RPG/adventure series emerges for Mario and friends. And no more stickers/stamps/cards.
@Tantani 4.3m might be small for a budget....but when you're starting 4.3m in debt WITHOUT the budget for a production factored in, you're not in a good place. They would be incapable of actually producing anything without outside publisher funding, and they have zero experience working on modern platforms, so they'd need hand-holding to even work on Switch. It just doesn't sound like a tenable situation from any angle. They had no hope of making any Switch game unless fully externally funded.
Honestly the ds version was the first mario rp game i ever play.
@victordamazio That comes with its own risks, and it doesn necessarily save a studio from shut down. See, every studio that EA has shut down.
@jobvd Not sure how widespread Bowser's Inside Story was printed, but a month later Nintendo released Yokai Watch 3 at rate of like 2 copies per store.
Can't really blame people for not buying a game whose stock gets quickly bought out by the scalpers. That is at least, people who don't want to buy forced to digitally buy a physically-available game.
Honestly people are stupid i bet there just haters and never play the game cause that game has great music so many idiot people..
@jobvd I loved Dream Team. Had great fun, 100% the game (not new game +). However, BiS wasn't my thing as much. I got stuck in places, not knowing where to go and the scenery of bowser, wasn't that fun artistically for me, so I didn't want a rerelease tbh.
Dang. I knew they weren't system sellers, but that is pretty bad especially considering that most of their games were actually pretty good.
This is a serious shame, especially for the employees. That being said, there is some good that can come out of this for us consumers--maybe they'll get bought out or perhaps this will be the kick in the pants Nintendo needs to bring back good Paper Mario RPGs. Sticker Star was the way it was because they didn't want to run two concurrent Mario RPG series.
A lot of serious gamers trade their consoles in when a new one is released. So those that viewed the Switch as the new handheld would have traded their 3d/3ds in to get the Switch.
And those that buy the second hand 3d's more than likely buy used games. Or they keep their 3d console to play their existing games and just buy the Switch titles.
It's not rocket science.
@RupeeClock It was good, however the Bowser's Inside Story 3DS remake in particular is among the worst selling games in the entire Mario franchise. I guess all of the loss from sales fell directly on AlphaDream's shoulders as opposed to Nintendo's, which is pretty confusing considering they were developing a game that directly used Nintendo's IP and characters.
I'm honestly surprised Nintendo didn't just buy them outright during the early 2010s when pretty much all they were developing was Mario & Luigi games. They could've become a compotent second party developer for the company like Game Freak, HAL, Intelligent Systems and Camelot.
This must be a bit of a nightmare for Mario R.P.G. fans. With "Paper Mario" ruined as a series, "Mario & Luigi" was all we had left.
So 3DS isn't officially "dead" because there's some people in here who own them in the back of their closets. But can we agree that Alphadream is DEAD.
@BlueBlur101
In particular, it seems like Alpha Dream weren't progressing as a developer and may've lacked the skill or expertise needed to make the jump to Switch or any home console equivalent.
2D sprite based stuff is most of what they've known, and most of the 3D stuff usually being outsourced, like the Dreamy Luigi battles being done by Good Feel.
Their downfall was likely a number of factors like them maybe not being capable of making a Switch game (or a high-resolution game), or Nintendo's decision to make an end of life 3DS game.
I knew their last game wasn't a big success, but did it had to affect them so much? I will miss their charming Mario & Luigi games Not to mention they were developing a multi-platform title, as hinted last year. Now that it's likely cancelled by now, I wonder what it could have been...
...Wait, 3DS plans? Does that mean Nintendo was developing more 3DS games? I wonder what they were, too.
On a brighter side, maybe this could mean Mario & Luigi will finally experience a much-needed evolution in terms of gameplay. And if not, it could be the perfect opportunity for Paper Mario to return as the RPG representative (that said, it's likely the next entry has been in development since 2016). But honestly, the RPG formula of the Mario & Luigi series was so unique it would need to be adapted.
They are a second party dev to Nintendo right so why isn't Nintendo just throw in a few million yenns to help them out of this debt? It's not like the money making Switch is going away any time soon. Also a new Mario and Luigi game for the Switch would be awesome or maybe even a collection of all five games.
Sad to hear and I hope everybody there gets a chance to make another game and time for the Switch! They made some great games with the classic RGP style. Might have to make a list and pick the others up!
Nintendo should snap them up and get them to make a new switch Mario RPG...
Why do good companies always are the ones that go bankrupt. The companies that do bad things should go bankrupt not them.
@iMarkU Yeah I know different developers but they changed paper Mario from an RPG to a card abomination due to them not wanting it to compete with Mario & luigi
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