Next Level Games, the developers who created Luigi’s Mansion 3, have been acquired by Nintendo. The company launched in 2002 and has been making games exclusively for Nintendo since 2014. Other titles developed by Next Level Games include Luigi’s Manion: Dark Moon, Metroid Prime: Federation Force, and Punch-Out for the Wii. This means that it is now a subsidiary company to Nintendo. Any other terms for the studio have yet to be announced. The change will officially occur on March 1st, 2021.
This is unusual for Nintendo. AlphaDream, the game studio that developed the Mario & Luigi series unfortunately went bankrupt without acquisition from Nintendo back in 2019, and Level Five, creators of the Professor Layton series recently shut down localization in the US. The last studio to be acquired by Nintendo was Xenoblade Chronicles developer, Monolith Sloth, back in 2007.
Likely, Luigi’s Mansion 3‘s high sales and reviews spurred Nintendo’s decision. The game was the fastest-selling Switch game of 2019, outperforming The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, and won best family game at the 2019 game awards,
Source: MSN GeekWire, Nintendolife
