During a recent investor’s call, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa stated that the Japanese gaming giant has no interest in buying other game studios.
“Our brand was built upon products crafted with dedication by our employees, and having a large number of people who don’t possess Nintendo DNA in our group would not be a plus to the company,” said Furukawa, according to Bloomberg.
This isn’t the first time Furukawa has alluded to this strategy. Back in November, Nintendo’s president said that it plans to spend 100 billion yen (about 1.1 billion CAD) on its own developers rather than investing in new studios.
That said, Nintendo does have some history with studio acquisitions. For example, last year the company acquired Vancouver-based Next Level Games, a developer that has worked on Nintendo titles for more than a decade, including, most recently, Luigi’s Mansion 3.
The video game industry has experienced a bit of an arms race lately when it comes to acquisitions. For example, Microsoft recently announced plans to acquire Activision blizzard in a deal valued at $68.7 billion USD (roughly 85.96 billion CAD), and just this week, Sony revealed that it’s purchased Bungie for $3.6 billion USD (roughly $4.6 billion CAD).
Given that Nintendo’s platforms have always been best known for the company’s own iconic franchises, including the Mario and Zelda series, it makes sense that the Japanese gaming plans to continue to stay the course in the increasingly consolidated gaming industry.
Source: Bloomberg
