While Microsoft and Sony seek to battle it out in the acquisition wars, Nintendo will make the most Nintendo move possible: ignoring the competition and sticking with publishing its own first-party games.
Last November, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa told investors that the Japanese company plans to spend around 100 billion yen on itself, investing in its own developers. With Microsoft working to acquire Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion and Sony acquiring Bungie for $3.6 billion, Furukawa told investors in a Thursday presentation that Nintendo’s plans wouldn’t be changing, Bloomberg reported.
“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.
However, the president also said that he isn’t entirely against acquisitions. For example, just last year Nintendo acquired Next Level Games, the studio behind Luigi’s Mansion 3. But that acquisition only came after the Vancouver-based studio spent a decade building games for Nintendo.
Serkan Toto, a Tokyo-based consultant, also told Bloomberg that he doesn’t see Nintendo jumping on the acquisition bandwagon. “I really have a hard time imagining which of the big ones they could even be interested in buying,” he said. “Nintendo will always stay Nintendo. The company has always relied on first-party games, and I don’t see any reason why they should change.”
While Nintendo’s philosophy could always change in the future, it’s probably safe to take “Nintendo buys Square Enix” off of your 2022 video game acquisition Bingo card.
