Nintendo Acquires Longtime Development Partner

Nintendo announced the acquisition of a studio this week and is now the sole owner of SRD Co. Ltd, a developer that Nintendo has been working with for a long time now. The work done alongside Nintendo to create games for the publisher has been going on for "nearly four decades," the company announced this week in documents that confirmed the acquisition. The deal is expected to be settled on April 1st assuming everything else goes smoothly.

Over the nearly 40 years the two have been working together, SRD has developed or worked on just about every big franchise Nintendo is known for. Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Kirby, Animal Crossing, and more are all different areas of Nintendo's catalog that SRD has worked on. The company's most recent project was last year's Game Builder Garage, and before that, work on Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Nintendo said it expects the acquisition to have "only a minor effect" on Nintendo's results.

While it's certainly not unheard of these days for a company as big as Nintendo to acquire a developer, Nintendo doesn't make a habit of it, or at least hasn't been making headlines lately for doing so. That's at least when they're compared to Microsoft and Sony, Nintendo's biggest competitors, which both recently announced acquisitions of different companies.

We're talking, of course, about Microsoft's first big move which saw them acquiring Bethesda, the creators of the Fallout and Elder Scrolls series as well as many more. That's led now to things like Starfield – the upcoming space RPG from Bethesda – to be console exclusives on the Xbox platform. Microsoft also notably acquired Activision Blizzard, the creators of the Call of Duty series, World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and more. The Call of Duty series will not be exclusive to Xbox consoles, however, a confirmation which came earlier this month much to the appreciation of those on the PlayStation platform who were worked about losing access to the games.