Monolith Soft has been a first-party Nintendo studio for close to two decades at this point, and by 2011, the company’s ownership of Monolith had expanded to 96 percent of its shares. But though Nintendo has had a majority ownership of the Xenoblade Chronicles studio, a small percentage of its shares (4 percent, to be precise) have remained in the ownership of its co-founders, Hirohide Sugiura, Tetsuya Takahashi, and Yasuyuki Honne.
That, however, no longer seems to be the case. Spotted by Automaton Media, an update to Monolith Soft’s website now confirms that 100 percent of the studio’s shares are now owned by Nintendo. Of course, functionally, this won’t make much difference, since Nintendo already had full control over the studio anyway, though on paper, Monolith Soft is now entirely in Nintendo’s ownership.
The studio’s next release is Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition, which is due out for the Nintendo Switch in March. What Monolith Soft’s next big game will be is currently unknown, though with Nintendo’s next-gen console presumably launching in 2025, one would hope that the studio’s next title will be unveiled for it in the not-too-distant future.
