Nintendo Set To Acquire Bandai Namco Singapore Studios

Nintendo has announced they have plans to purchase 80% of Bandai Namco Studios Singapore. The branch is a division of the Japanese company, and were established in 2013. It's a team that has worked regularly with Nintendo on software like the Splatoon series and New Pokemon Snap. the team has also heavily worked with a lot of Bandai Namco's action titles, such as Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, Soul Calibur VI, and Tekken 8. It's within Nintendo's plans to boost and expand their development capabilities. Procedures will finalize on April 1st, and the team will be renamed Nintendo Studios Singapore. The acquisition will aid in Nintendo's ability to produce high fidelity 3D models and in-game assets.

Bandai Namco uses this move as a mission statement to restructure their game divisions, so this embarks great changes for the Tekken 8 producers. March 2nd, they announced that Sony purchased 16 million shares (which equates to $464.5 million dollars. This will allow Sony to hold 2.5% stock in Bandai Namco. They also plan to announce new personnel into management roles, and renaming divisions.

As this division of Namco lent most of its services to Nintendo development, this move makes sense from both company's position. The Nintendo Switch 2 will wrap up its first year following the June 5th 2025 launch, and likely have big plans in store for upcoming, high demand software. A new 3D Mario game remains in the rumor mill, with fans and pundits expecting a reveal sooner rather than later. The Legend of Zelda series is expected to head in a new direction following the conclusion of the story arc involving the Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom lore. There's also a new Fire Emblem title in the works. Having a veteran development team on board may go a long way to showing off the capabilities of Nintendo's new hardware. From an in-house studio standpoint, it has been rather lean year for the hybrid console. It's technical news, so time will tell on what this new division of Nintendo's team brings.