As a part of its recent Corporate Management Policy Briefing for FY2025, Nintendo has reiterated its stance on mergers and acquisitions. Namely, while future acquisitions are never off the table, it would rather "organically expand the organisation".
This, the briefing note claimed, is so that new staff members to Nintendo can "fully learn and understand our creative culture" — as opposed to splitting things across too many studios, we'd imagine.
In an age where smaller studios are constantly snatched up by the gaming giants, Nintendo has made very few acquisitions in recent years. In fact, since 2021, the studio has only pulled out the merger net on a handful of occasions. Most recently, Shiver Entertainment was pulled under the Nintendo umbrella back in May, but before that, we have to go back to 2022 when the Big N picked up Dynamo Pictures (soon renamed Nintendo Pictures) and SRD, with Luigi's Mansion 3 developer Next Level Games being purchased before that.
To be clear, the briefing specifies that future purchases of this ilk are not off the table — "we do not rule out the possibility of further mergers and acquisitions" — but, as ever, Nintendo would rather go its own way and develop things organically before calling on the help of others.
Elsewhere in the briefing, Nintendo made it official that 'Switch 2' will be backwards compatible, finally putting all hopes of 'Mario Kart 8 Deluxer' to rest... unless...