Nintendo agrees to acquire Luigi's Mansion 3 developer Next Level Games

Luigi's Mansion 3
Luigi's Mansion 3 (Image credit: Nintendo)

What you need to know

  • Next Level Games developed Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon and Luigi's Mansion 3.
  • Nintendo has agreed to acquire Next Level Games.
  • This deal should close on March 1, 2021.

Major acquisitions are the name of the game for the gaming industry right now and Nintendo is making moves so as not to miss out. Today, Nintendo announced that it has agreed to acquire Next Level Games, makers of one of the best Nintendo Switch games available, Luigi's Mansion 3.

Per Nintendo, this acquisition is expected to close on March 1, 2021, pending the participants being okay with the undisclosed terms and regulatory approval under the Investment Canada Act.

Based in Vancouver, Canada, Next Level Games developed different titles like Super Mario Strikers in 2005 and Spider-Man: Friend or Foe in 2007 before eventually working on Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon in 2013 and more recently, Luigi's Mansion 3 in 2019.

Nintendo's first-party developers are organized quite differently from others like Sony and Microsoft, with a bulk of Nintendo's development forces located in the Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development unit, or Nintendo EPD. With that said, Nintendo does own a few other game development studios, including 1-Up Studio, Monolith Soft, NDCube and Retro Studios.

Samuel Tolbert
Contributor

Samuel Tolbert is a freelance gaming writer who started working for iMore and its sister sites Windows Central and Android Central in July 2019. He handles news, previews, reviews, and exclusive original reporting, and has also been featured on TechRadar. With a background studying engineering before he shifted his focus to gaming journalism, he's skilled at identifying technical advantages and disadvantages provided by different hardware. If he’s not writing something, he’s off playing video games, spending time with his pets, exercising, or reading. He's also fond of trying to draw things with his iPad.