Nintendo Now Officially Owns 100% Of Monolith Soft

Image: Nintendo

The 'Company Profile' section of the Monolith Soft website has been updated and it looks like Nintendo now finally owns 100% of the company (thanks, Automaton West).

The Big N first staked its claim in Monolith back in 2007, purchasing 80% of its shares from Namco before increasing its proportion to 96% in 2011. It's unclear exactly when the remaining shares came under the ownership of the House of Mario, but up to at least March of this year, company founders Hirohide Sugiura, Tetsuya Takahashi and Yasuyuki Honne still owned the remaining symbolic 4% (according to the company's 2024 brochure).

Now, however, things are wholly in Nintendo's favour:

Image: Monolith Soft

Of course, many of us have considered Monolith Soft a first-party studio for a good while now. This is the team behind all of the Xenoblade games, having also lent Nintendo its development wisdom on titles like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild, the Splatoon series and Animal Crossing: New Horizons (seriously, if you haven't checked out the 'Games' page on the company's website, it's well worth a look).

With the remaining shares now in Nintendo's control, the studio is officially a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Big N. We have Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition to look forward to in March 2025, but we can't help but hope that this partnership is cooking up something big for 'Switch 2'.