Nintendo Acquiring Long-Time Development Partner SRD

By M. Kang

Posted on February 26, 2022

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Nintendo is set to acquire long-time development partner SRD!

As reported by Eurogamer and Engadget, SRD will officially join Nintendo likely in April for an undisclosed amount. Nintendo and SRD have a close relationship as they have worked together since the NES era and have continued to work together on some of the Switch’s biggest titles like Breath of the Wild.

In recent days, the gaming industry has quickly started to coalesce around a few major players. Most notably, Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard for a record $68.7 billion. Previously, Microsoft had acquired Bethesda. PlayStation also has had its fair share of acquisitions as in the past year, Housemarque, Nixxes Software, Firesprite, and Bluepoint Games all joined PlayStation Studios and PlayStation added Bungie as an “independent” studio. Even Take-Two acquired Zynga as part of a push to move into mobile gaming.

While other major players of the gaming industry has made large acquisitions, Nintendo has remained fairly quiet. Industry insiders as well Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa do not see Nintendo as rushing to join this frenzy and only acquiring studios if they align with Nintendo’s particular aesthetic, vision, and character.

But given SRD’s history with Nintendo, the purchase is no surprise! Perhaps more developers that work with Nintendo’s major IPs will be brought more directly under the game developer’s fold.