Jubenhimer
Member
Microsoft and Sony Interactive Entertainment have recently been making big spends on acquiring studios all over the place. Microsoft even went as far as to merge with an entire publisher, giving themselves two creative publishing labels in Xbox Game Studios and Bethesda Softworks. So where does that leave Nintendo? Nintendo hasn't made nearly as big of a push in buying up studios. The most recent acquisition, was Next Level Games last March. Before that, was MonolithSoft in 2007.
Nintendo does things a bit differently than its contemporaries. Rather than buy a large collection of disparate studios, they instead have a few dozen small internal groups that work on a wide variety of games both internally and from external and subsidiary studios. Nintendo publishes way more games per year than either SIE or XGS, so they're not exactly starving for content. And Nintendo is a Japanese company. Japanese game companies generally don't go for the "Buy them all" approach of companies like Microsoft or EA. That seems to be more of a western business strategy. If Nintendo does acquire a studio, it's usually because the studio itself wants to sell and Nintendo sees their value in a key area.
That said, buying a lot more studios could give Nintendo more places to make games with. More developers could mean more houses for creative thought, which could mean different takes on Nintendo classics or New IPs that deviate from traditional Nintendo aesthetics. It could also mean that the studio has a safety net in case things go south rather than just struggle and wither away (though that's not always a guarantee).
So should Nintendo get in on the studio shopping spree? IMO, no, there is no real incentive at the moment. There's plenty of games coming to the Switch every month first and third party, so those N64/Wii U-esque software droughts are a thing of the past. However, it would be interesting if Nintendo did join in on the trend and start buying and merging with more developers.
Nintendo does things a bit differently than its contemporaries. Rather than buy a large collection of disparate studios, they instead have a few dozen small internal groups that work on a wide variety of games both internally and from external and subsidiary studios. Nintendo publishes way more games per year than either SIE or XGS, so they're not exactly starving for content. And Nintendo is a Japanese company. Japanese game companies generally don't go for the "Buy them all" approach of companies like Microsoft or EA. That seems to be more of a western business strategy. If Nintendo does acquire a studio, it's usually because the studio itself wants to sell and Nintendo sees their value in a key area.
That said, buying a lot more studios could give Nintendo more places to make games with. More developers could mean more houses for creative thought, which could mean different takes on Nintendo classics or New IPs that deviate from traditional Nintendo aesthetics. It could also mean that the studio has a safety net in case things go south rather than just struggle and wither away (though that's not always a guarantee).
So should Nintendo get in on the studio shopping spree? IMO, no, there is no real incentive at the moment. There's plenty of games coming to the Switch every month first and third party, so those N64/Wii U-esque software droughts are a thing of the past. However, it would be interesting if Nintendo did join in on the trend and start buying and merging with more developers.