Nintendo has bumped its shares up to 100%... from 96%.
Monolith Soft, the developer behind the Xenoblade Chronicles series and main support studio on Zelda: Breath of the Wild is now completely owned by Nintendo.
While it's been around for almost two and a half decades now, Monolith Soft has mostly made a name for itself over the past 10 or so years with the Xenoblade Chronicles series, and for good reason. They're strong, beefy RPGs that connect in really fun ways, and the developer has clearly proven itself a strong studio over the years by offering support on a whole range of titles like Breath of the Wild, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and all three Splatoon games. Now, as reported by Automaton, it appears that Monolith Soft is wholly owned by Nintendo, a move that likely won't make a lick of difference in the grand scheme of things, but one that obviously makes sense.
Nintendo has owned 96% of Monolith Soft's shares since 2011, the last 4% being held symbolically by the companies founders, except as seen on Monolith Soft's website, the Mario maker now owns it completely. In a lot of cases one company completely owning another might be a big deal, but Monolith hasn't even released a game on a non-Nintendo platform since 2006 with Xenosaga Episode 3 on the PS2. So, yeah, you can probably expect things to stay the way they are at both Nintendo and Monolith Soft.
Right now it's not clear whether Monolith has anything completely original in the works - what we do know, though, is that Xenoblade Chronicles X is finally coming to the Nintendo Switch March next year, a title fans have been asking to come to the platform for years now. It'll also likely be one of the last big titles to come to the Switch, considering the launch of the Switch 2, or whatever it's called, will definitely be out sometime next year.
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