Nintendo has bought out Monolith Soft’s founders to take full ownership of the game company.
As reported by Automaton Media, Monolith Soft published a recent brochure revealing that the company’s founders had divested all their stock and sold it to Nintendo. Monolith Soft and Nintendo did not share notice regarding when the buyout happened. We will note this information is likely in Japan’s notary system, but we ourselves don’t have the resources to follow up.
Monolith Soft was founded in 1999 by three Square employees who were feeling dissatisfied with projects in their own company, and wanted to pursue their own vision.
Tetsuya Takahashi, Hirohide Sugiura, and Yasuyuki Honne worked on Square’s signature Final Fantasy franchise, as well as various other franchises, like the fighting game Tobal No. 1 and military strategy title Front Mission. They successfully brokered a deal with Namco to be their subsidiary, for Namco to handle distribution and publishing, and allow the new studio to focus on making games.
Monolith Soft’s early claim to fame was the Xenosaga series on PlayStation 2, and then the Baten Kaitos games on GameCube. However, they also took on various work for hire projects, including assisting their former co-workers at Square on Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII and Namco X Capcom. At one point they even pitched an Earthbound game with Nintendo.
In 2007, Monolith Soft made arrangements to move from Namco to Nintendo. Namco’s founder, Masaya Nakamura, had just left the company, and Monolith Soft felt that the changes in Namco were no longer to their benefit creatively.
When Nintendo bought Monolith Soft’s shares, they made an arrangement for Nintendo to own 80 % of the company, and the founders to split the rest. In 2011, after the success of the first Xenoblade Chronicles, Nintendo took 96 % of the company, with the founders splitting the remaining 4 %.
So in a way, this buyout may be mostly a formality. Monolith Soft was mainly working for Nintendo already, and it’s clear that the company has big plans for their burgeoning studio. The Xenoblade Chronicles trilogy on Switch is not quite a new pillar in the same way that Splatoon or Animal Crossing became, but it is successful enough that Nintendo will want to encourage them to make more original titles.
But there could certainly be layers to this that aren’t disclosed yet either. For example, this buyout implies that Monolith Soft’s founders have decided to retire. If they aren’t quite leaving the company, they may be taking roles with less day to day tasks, in the same way that Miyamoto is a Creative Fellow at Nintendo.
But this buyout does allow for Nintendo to incorporate Monolith Soft into their company. That does not necessarily mean that Monolith Soft is being dissolved or that anyone is being laid off, but it could mean that Monolith Soft will be more closely involved in Nintendo’s big IPs, like Mario and Zelda. Monolith Soft staff may even be brought closer to Nintendo’s management position.
With Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition looming on the horizon, Monolith Soft definitely has a bright future ahead of them. Whether that means bigger Xenoblade games, or Monolith Soft becoming the main studio for the next The Legend of Zelda, we don’t quite know yet. But the possibilities are absolutely enthralling.
