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Nintendo gets Monolith Soft from Bandai-Namco

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ethelred said:
What in the world would you buy Monolith Soft for other than to make RPGs?
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Disaster isn't a RPG I think. But Monolith already confirmed that they also have a RPG in the works right now...
 
I'm in the minority, but I really want the Xenoseries to continue. I really liked the characters and story of the first three games; wouldn't mind seeing it continued on the DS, although I dunno how they'd pull of hour-long cut-scenes on it.
 
let me have a go at a snide joke in light of this news...

Maybe Nintendo did this so people would stop saying third party games sell better than first party games on their systems? Instead of people pointing to Monolith Soft's Wii games as proof of that, Nintendo will be able to point to them as proof of the opposite.

not sure how i did there.

hopefully this means Disaster isn't one.
 
AniHawk said:
n-Space is next. Then Bungie.
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I doubt it. Nintendo said they prefer to work with third parties on a case by case basis rather than acquisition. They would have bought Kuju or Silicon Knights or Left Field. Monolith is more a case Nintendo really cosying up to Namco lately. After their disastrous relationship in the SNES days.
 
jj984jj said:
:lol

Rare/Silicon Knights/Left Field am cry? Actually, what does Monolith Soft have that they don't?
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True they should have kept Left Field. Excite Bike 64 is still the best dirt bike game i've played ever. I think its the disagreement over the direction of 1080 Snowboarding that made Left Field get dropped so they handed over the title to NST. But Nintendo ended up being wrong in the end anyway, 1080 as they wanted it ended up being crap.


..
 
Ugh. The unfounded Xeno-hate is SO 1998.

LET. IT. GO.

Toastyfrog is a self-righteous fool with a thesaurus.
 
Cygnus X-1 said:
Why the aquisition of Monolith from Nintendo is such a bad thing for the GAF Community ?
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As I understand it from this thread, for the Xenosaga haters (most of which never played the games), it's bad because it somehow taints their precious Nintendo. For the Xenosaga fans it's bad because they don't see Nintendo funding Xenosaga-like epics. I'm more with the second camp, but it's not that bad as Xenosaga III seems to be a worthy conclusion of the series.
 
Wyndstryker said:
Hmm...these guys would be perfect for making a new StarTropics...
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Yeah, if only NCL gave a crap about StarTropics, it wasn't even released in Japan (and hasn't even shown up in Smash Bros. as even a trophy) I've always thought the group in the US doing Project Hammer now (can't remember their acronym for some reason) should revive StarTropics.
 
Awesome news.
Hunahan said:
I wouldn't mind Nintendo mining those talented portions of Monolith and bringing some high-budget, cinematic RPG action to the Wii under better conceptual direction.
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Labombadog said:
OMG! Huge news for us RPG/Nintendo fans!
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both QFT
 
Mithos Yggdrasill said:
The condition to be first party is to have the 100% of shares of the company...or not ?
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I think 51% is enough, the Stamper Bros sold their Rare shares to MS and Nintendo had to sold their part afterwards because there was no point of owning part of them if MS was the one calling the shots.
 
bumpkin said:
Wait... Monolith had a part in Condemned... That means no Condemned 2 for the 360? If so, ****! That sucks ass.
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Monolith soft are japanese monolith productions are western.

Edit: read above.
 
titiklabingapat said:
First Party.
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According to wikipedia it's second party.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolith_Soft said:
On April 26th, 2007, Bandai-Namco sold 80% of their 96% stake in Monolith Soft to Nintendo, effectively making the studio a Nintendo second-party.
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JDSN said:
I think 51% is enough, the Stamper Bros sold their Rare shares to MS and Nintendo had to sold their part afterwards because there was no point of owning part of them if MS was the one calling the shots.
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No. Nintendo sold their shares back to the Stampers, who then sold all of their shares to Microsoft.
 
Durante said:
As I understand it from this thread, for the Xenosaga haters (most of which never played the games), it's bad because it somehow taints their precious Nintendo. For the Xenosaga fans it's bad because they don't see Nintendo funding Xenosaga-like epics. I'm more with the second camp, but it's not that bad as Xenosaga III seems to be a worthy conclusion of the series.
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Nintendo isn't nessecarily averse to putting money or time behind a game.

The newest zelda is F**king monstorous and dwarfs most RPG's i've played and metroid prime is one of the most polished big budget games you'll ever see. Nearly all nintendo's big franchise games are very high budget.

I expect that they've bought monolith just so they can fund some big epic RPG's and have an experienced team making them. I just don't expect those games to be called Baten Kaitos or Xenosaga. Nintendo will want them to start something fresh and new that doesn't have any franchise baggage.

My guess is that it's already being developed and that it's some unknown RPG and not Disaster: day of crisis that's got nintendo impressed enough to buy the company.
 
So, who was working on Crono Cross again ?


Better relationships with S-E through Nintendo wouldn't help to realise an ol' fan dream ?
 
Like others said in the thread, I'd have preferred if Nintendo got tri-Ace or tri-Crescendo as RPG devs, instead of Monolith. tri-Ace... there's a company who frequently makes some of the best looking games to take advantage of their respective platforms, I'd argue that they are my favorite development team ever. Would love to see what they do with the Wii remote, not to mention it'd be nice to have another Wii game that looks really good.

Then again, maybe with Nintendo's direction, they can make some solid RPGs that are fun to play and not overly pretentious. I don't like the Xenosaga games much at all, but this shows that Nintendo is interested in having a strong RPG lineup for the Wii, which is something that the Wii desperately needs at this point (and something both the N64 and GC lacked), so I'm happy for the news.
 
Kafel said:
So, who was working on Crono Cross again ?


Better relationships with S-E through Nintendo wouldn't help to realise an ol' fan dream ?
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Monolith was like 1/2 to 2/3 of the Chrono Cross team. The bulk of the remainder is still at Square, working on FFXI.
 
djtiesto said:
Like others said in the thread, I'd have preferred if Nintendo got tri-Ace or tri-Crescendo as RPG devs, instead of Monolith. tri-Ace... there's a company who frequently makes some of the best looking games to take advantage of their respective platforms, I'd argue that they are my favorite development team ever. Would love to see what they do with the Wii remote, not to mention it'd be nice to have another Wii game that looks really good.

Then again, maybe with Nintendo's direction, they can make some solid RPGs that are fun to play and not overly pretentious. I don't like the Xenosaga games much at all, but this shows that Nintendo is interested in having a strong RPG lineup for the Wii, which is something that the Wii desperately needs at this point (and something both the N64 and GC lacked), so I'm happy for the news.
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I agree.

i'm very hopeful that nintendo will turn this team into the next retro. I doubt if namco ever gave them the kind of financial/time freedom they could have as a nintendo first party.

It's a new situation now. If there are super talented people in this studio they will be allowed to make the best game they possibly can. At the same time, their games are now "nintendo" games so it's a whole new set of expectations to live up to and there may be some new restrictions or a new philosophy.

I wish nintendo would buy more studios like this. Maybe this signals a change in direction in regards to aquiring new first party devs.
 
d[-_-]b said:
According to wikipedia it's second party.
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If you 10 people what a second party developer is you will very likely get several definitions.

By Nintendo's explanation of why they called Rare a second party, a second party is a company they don't have a controlling majority in and yet they still develop for their console exclusively. Just like Silicon Knights did for Nintendo on GCN, and Insomniac does for Sony on PS3. I'm sure Nintendo sees Monolith Soft likely Retro now, as a part of the company.
 
Looks like a waste of money now. According to Wikipedia tri-Crescendo did the Baten Kaitos series. Monolith only wrote the scenario and art.
 
I think everyone is going down the wrong path by either saying this was a waste of money, or why didn't Nintendob buy someone else. Although we have no way of really knowing what happened, it seems like Nintendo had a very good working relationship with Monolith, and Namco was interested in dumping them (one way or another), so Nintendo said "We'll taken them off your hands for ya," and probably paid a pretty rock-bottom price for them. Or so it seems.
 
nightez said:
Looks like a waste of money now. According to Wikipedia tri-Crescendo did the Baten Kaitos series. Monolith only wrote the scenario and art.
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I'm sure a few more weeks of DS sales will cover this purchase.
And are you implying there was something wrong with Monolith's scenario and art?
 
Well, Nintendo does not make too many mistakes when it comes to buying/working closely with companies. The wort pair up being with nspace on Geist. I'm really looking forward to seeing was Disaster looks like.
 
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