Nintendo buys Monolith Soft from Namco

[7th lutz]

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6169813.html?action=convert&om_clk=latestnews&tag=latestnews;title;0

Namco Bandai Games today announced on its Japanese Web site that it is selling its majority interest in developer Monolith Soft to Nintendo. According to the publisher, Nintendo has acquired 80 percent of the company's shares.

Namco Bandai is considering the sale as a way to strengthen its relationship with Nintendo and is not entirely ending its involvement with Monolith Soft. Namco Bandai will retain 16 percent of the developer's shares and will continue to count the studio among its partners. Best known as the developer behind Namco Bandai's Baten Kaitos and Xenosaga series of role-playing games, Monolith Soft is also currently at work on Nintendo's Disaster: Day of Crisis for the Wii.

This more rpgs for the wii.

[Kid Fenris]

Word is that Nintendo's officially getting ownership of the Baten Kaitos series, which Monolith co-developed with tri-Crescendo. It's not yet clear if the Xenosaga franchise still belongs to Namco or not.

Regardless, this is an unexpected move from Nintendo, which usually contracts with developers instead of buying them outright.

I await Super Mariosaga Episode IV: Bratwurst mit Pommes oder Brot.

[MegaDrive20XX]

Baiten Mario Saga: Episode Zwei: Also All tacos for $0.99!

This is pretty bold of Nintendo to make a jump like this...I hope they do well :)

[Aussie2B]

Well, this is definitely an interesting turn of events. As far as I see, it can only mean good things. :)

[djbeatmongrel]

maybe they did it yo get Kos Mos and Shion Uzuki into smash brothers...
one can only hope

[DigitalSpace]

It'll be interesting to see where this goes, that's for sure.

[studvicious]

Regardless, I just can't wait until Disaster: Day of Crisis comes out.

[djsquarewave]

My guess is that Nintendo feels like they need to get a mainstream JRPG franchise going. Maybe they see some unrealized potential in Xenosaga? Intelligent Systems have made some damn fine RPG-ish games, but they're all strategy-oriented (Fire Emblem, Famicom Wars) or oddball (Paper Mario). Nintendo doesn't really have a first-party RPG franchise that I can think of.

Interesting if Bandai-Namco is using this to strengthen their ties with Nintendo. I mean, they already did a Mario Kart game and a Star Fox game, built an arcade platform together with Sega, and had one of Nintendo's most famous characters featured in an a-list title (Soul Calibur II). You'd think they were already on good terms with each other...

Though hell if this means Xenosaga characters in Smash. Snake is already a bit of a stretch...

[GuyinGA]

It may mean Nintendo will one day own Bandai Namco. It happens in business most of the time. They buy one part, next thing you know, they've got another, then the whole company....

[portnoyd]

It seems like Bandai Namco keeps pooping out endless exclusives for the DS, GC, and Wii, so it could be the logical next step.