Nintendo has announced that it has purchased Next Level Games, the studio behind the Mario Strikers and latest Luigi’s Mansion games.
As a second-party partner, the Vancouver-based company has already worked exclusively with Nintendo since 2014. However, the acquisition will help Nintendo improve “development speed and quality by enabling closer communication and exchange of staff with the Nintendo development team,” according to Nintendo. According to sources close to Nikkei, the deal is valued somewhere between “1 billion yen to as high as 10 billion yen” (between $9.7 million to $97.3 million).
Next Level Games has quite the track record with the Nintendo audience, gaining considerable attention for the creation of the Mario Strikers series on Nintendo GameCube and Wii, Punch-Out! on Wii, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon for 3DS, and more recently Luigi’s Mansion 3 on Nintendo Switch. Nintendo’s purchase of Next Level Games is set to be completed on March 1st, 2021.
Source: Nintendo PR
