Nintendo has bought out the remaining shares of Monolith Soft, Automaton reports. Until recently, Monolith’s founders held a four percent stake in the company, probably for symbolic reasons, but those days are over. Now it all belongs to Nintendo.
Monolith is primarily known for the Xenoblade Chronicles franchise, but in recent years, the developer has helped with major Nintendo projects. It provided support for such games as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. In addition, the company helped create the recent Splatoon and Animal Crossing games.
Monolith Soft was founded in 1999 by Hirohide Sugiura, Tetsuya Takahashi, and Yasuyuki Honne, along with a significant investment from Bandai Namco. The company created the Xenosaga series, the spiritual successor to Square’s Xenogears, which was written and directed by co-founder Takahashi.
Monolith created a trio of Xenosaga games before Nintendo bought 80 percent of the company’s shares from Bandai Namco in 2007. In 2011, Nintendo increased its stake to 96 percent, and now it owns all of the hundreds.
We don’t know exactly when this final transaction took place. In Monolith’s 2024 brochure, the founders still owned four percent. This was the case as of October 1, but by November 21, as VGC noticed, the situation had changed. We also don’t know what Monolith was working on other than helping Nintendo create key franchises, but Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was definitely a good game.
