Nintendo's Xenoblade Chronicles Dev Monolith Soft Is Now 25 Years Old

Image: Nintendo Life / Monolith Soft

The talented Japanese developer Monolith Soft is this week celebrating its 25th anniversary as a video game company!

It started in 1999 under Namco with the team starting out with the release of the role-playing game Xenosaga Episode I for the PlayStation 2 in 2002. A year later it released the GameCube exclusive series Baten Kaitos, which eventually spawned a prequel in 2006.

This led to Nintendo's ownership of the developer in 2007, which saw the release of titles like Disaster: Day of Crisis and the birth of the Xenoblade Chronicles series, which continued the legacy of the Xeno RPG series.

Nowadays, apart from the Xenoblade Chronicles games, Monolith also plays a major role in the development of key Nintendo titles - offering support for series like The Legend of Zelda, Splatoon and Animal Crossing.

It most recently helped out with the 2023 hit The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - working on the design, programming and graphics. In the same year, it also released some DLC for Xenoblade Chronicles 3.