The big N starts 2021 by beefing up their North American operations.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/55904/nintendo-acquires-next-level-games
The makers of one of 2019's hits and 2016's Game of the Year are coming in-house at Nintendo.
Nintendo have reached an agreement (PDF link) to acquire Vancouver, British Columbia-based studio Next Level Games. Expected to close on March 1 pending regulatory approval in Canada, the acquisition of the privately held company will give Nintendo a second North American-based subsidiary developer to go along with Retro Studios.
Since being founded in 2002, Next Level developed the Mario Strikers games (2005 GameCube, 2007 Wii), Punch-Out!! (2009), Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon (2013, 3DS), Metroid Prime: Federation Force (2016, 3DS) and Luigi's Mansion 3 (2019, Switch).
Maybe Nintendo thinks they can do for them what they did to Retro Studios.Probably. Retro Studios didn’t become the renowned developer it is today until Nintendo bought Jeff Spangenberg’s controlling interest in the company. It subsequently cleaned house and canceled all other projects except Metroid Prime.
Well, this acquisition makes sense, although I'm not sure why Nintendo felt the need to pur hase them outright unless they were in danger of one of the ISP Gaming Vultures scooping them up, like Google or Amazon.