Nintendo have announced that they’ve finally making the move to purchase long-time collaborators Next Level Games, with the deal expected to close by March 1st, 2021. You can read about the acquisition for yourself over on Nintendo’s own website.
Who Are Next Level Games Again?
Nintendo have worked with Next Level Games for over decade at this point, with the Canadian developer working on Super Mario Strikers, the Wii version of Punch-Out and the ill-fated Metroid Prime: Federation Force.
Next Level Games have found their most success more recently however, as they were the talent behind Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon for the Nintendo 3DS, along with the absolutely excellent 2019 follow-up, Luigi’s Mansion 3 for the Switch.
Why Have Nintendo Purchased Next Level Games?
I think the real question is why did it take them this long, considering that the developer has been making games almost exclusively for Nintendo for a while now. Purchasing the team and making them a subsidiary was only the next logical step in their partnership.
According to the acquisition document linked above, this purchase will “secure the availability of development resources for Nintendo”, and “facilitate an anticipated improvement in development speed and quality by enabling closer communication and exchange of staff with the Nintendo development team”.
As for what Next Level Games are working on next, the document seems to suggest that we won’t be seeing anything from the developer for a while. The last section of the document, Future Business Projection, states that the acquisition won’t have much effect on Nintendo’s results in the current fiscal year. NLG’s contributions will only come into play properly for the fiscal years following.
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