Topic: Xenosaga to be a Nintendo exclusive?

[vudu]

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Originally posted by: capamerica
We're not going to find out if Nintendo gets the whole Xenosaga series until May 1st when the transaction goes though.

So it's May 2; who owns Xeno?

[capamerica]

Don't know still. No new details have come out and Monolith Soft's site has been updated yet =/

I keep checking http://www.monolithsoft.co.jp/ every 6 hours to see if its been updated yet. Its driving me crazy!  

[Adrock]

According the the latest IGN mailbag, Namco still owns Xenosaga. However, that's not a real confirmation, just "as far as [they] know."

[that Baby guy]

That's just their speculation, like you said.  It holds just as much water (probably less, actually) as most of our speculation in this thread.  Did they support it with any reasoning or history?

[18 Days]

So if Monolith did the Xenosaga games, does that mean they comprised the team behind the first half of Xenogears?

[capamerica]

Monolith Soft
The company was founded in 1999 by producer Hirohide Sugiura after he left Square Co. and accepted an investment from Namco.

Monolith Soft is usually associated with the Xenosaga series, a series of role-playing games on the PS2 console. Some of MLSI's staff are former employees of Square Co., who transferred to the new company after the creation of Chrono Cross. They were previously involved with the creation of Xenogears, from which the Xenosaga series is derived.

[Arbok]

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Originally posted by: thatguy
That's just their speculation, like you said.  It holds just as much water (probably less, actually) as most of our speculation in this thread.  Did they support it with any reasoning or history?

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Nintendo acquired a majority share of Monolith Soft from Namco, but so far as we know it did not gain any licenses with the deal. Namco owns the Xenosaga brand and I expect that it will continue to publish the series, whether it's with Monolith Soft as the developer (and quite possibly as a Wii exclusive, which would be amazing) or with another company altogether. Nintendo shares a very good relationship with Namco there is always the chance that Xenosaga could continue on Wii. I wouldn't mind a Baten Kaitos sequel, either. The short, direct answer is that Nintendo doesn't own the license, but that doesn't mean Xenosaga won't come to Wii. Relationships have a way of making things happen.

http://wii.ign.com/mail/index.html

Like I said: Publisher > Developer in most of these situations of franchise rights, unless the copyright says otherwise, and it didn't.

[capamerica]

First off IGN has no clue who owns what, the might as well be talking out of their asses like they always do. Until we hear the final word from both sides ANY thing could happen. IGN is just speculating they have no evidence that Namco owns Xenosaga, they have not talked to anyone at Namco about it all their "insight" comes from the same sources as where we're getting it.

Second, As I have stated over and over and OVER again, copyrights mean sh!t. Nintendo held most of Rare's copyrights and Nintendo didn't keep any of their series. And before you say "well Rare was a special case" show me 1, just 1 example of where a developer leaves its publisher and does NOT take their series with them.  

[Smash_Brother]

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Originally posted by: Arbok Nintendo acquired a majority share of Monolith Soft from Namco, but so far as we know it did not gain any licenses with the deal.

I'd take the "wait and see" approach with this.

IGN probably doesn't have much in the way of information about what is transpiring behind closed doors between two Japanese software giants.

If Nintendo didn't get any of the franchises with the purchase of the company, then why did they buy it when they could have simply asked Sugiura-san to come work for them and offered him his own internal Nintendo development studio?

[Plugabugz]

If nintendo bought 80%, and namco held the remaining 16... who owns that last 4%?

[capamerica]

SB brings up a excellent point
You don't buy a company for their staff, You only buy a company for their franchises. If you want person then you hire the person, you make them an offer they can't refuse and they go work for you.

Do you think Microsoft bought Rare or Bungie for the staff, hell no, they bought them for their franchises.
Did Nintendo buy Game Freak for their staff? No they bought them for Pokemon.
Did Namco merge with Bandai for the people who worked there, No it was for their franchises
Did Square merge with Enix to get a hold of their staff, no again it was for their franchises.

Its always about the franchises, its never about the staff.
You can easily hire someone away from a company, all you have to do is give them their own team and the freedom they want to make the games they want and you can have anyone you want without having to buy the whole company.

And even if you do buy a company there is no guarantee what so ever that the staff will even stay, just look a Rare and Bungie, how much of the original staff is still working there after the buy outs

[capamerica]

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Originally posted by: Plugabugz
If nintendo bought 80%, and namco held the remaining 16... who owns that last 4%?

The last 4% is owned by Monolith Soft, most likely by Hirohide Sugiura.

[Bill Aurion]

"You don't buy a company for their staff, You only buy a company for their franchises."

Why not?  You could easily buy a company for the sole reason of being impressed with their former products and wanting similar ones! (Or be really impressed with current products, <3 Disaster!)  =)  

[Smash_Brother]

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Originally posted by: Bill Aurion Why not?

Because the staff could (and generally do) leave the moment the announcement is made that the company is being sold.

Bungie's founders are gone, Rare's founders are gone, Blizzard's core programming team is gone, etc., etc.

Why would Nintendo throw away millions of dollars into Banco when they could just as easily have said to Sugiura, "Hand pick the best members of your dev staff and we'll give you your own internal Nintendo studio."?

If they didn't get the franchises, then Nintendo is reverting to their old ways and Ian should be here any second to lambast them for their stupidity.

[Nephilim]

Nintendo clearly bought Retro for raven blade then, and not because it was producing a game game called metroid prime  

[Mikintosh]

Bandai had franchises? I wasn't even aware they made games that weren't shoddy licensed anime crap. I can't believe Namco has to share the name of the company with them, honestly.

[Smash_Brother]

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Originally posted by: DeadlyD
Nintendo clearly bought Retro for raven blade then, and not because it was producing a game game called metroid prime

WTH is Raven Blade? (yes, that IS a rhetorical question)

Xenosaga and to a lesser extent, Baiten Kaitos, have fanbases and followings of their own, hence why acquiring the licenses to them would sway a LOT of potential RPG players over to the Wii.

Retro was bought more to keep tabs on the company and ensure that MP turned out well (since they don't want a sub-par release of a Nintendo franchise).

Disaster wasn't a Nintendo franchise so there was no reason for Nintendo to buy Monolith to "save" it. They must have had driving reasons beyond just Disaster.

[Bill Aurion]

Disaster has always been a "Nintendo franchise" considering it has been under Ninty's publishing label since it was first announced... =3

[UltimatePartyBear]

I'm going to wait and see as far as Monolith's franchises are concerned, but it is entirely possible that this deal was just a variation on the "Hand pick the best members of your dev staff and we'll give you your own internal Nintendo studio" plan.  If Nintendo wanted Sugiura, buying a dominating share of his existing studio might have been easier than building him a new one at Nintendo.

Edit:  It would also make it easier to cut its ties to Monolith and Sugiura in the future.

[SixthAngel]

I don't think its easy to walk up to the founder of a company and simply get them to leave their own company to work for you, taking employees with them and disbanding the company they probably own a chunk/most of.  The company pretty much has to be bought.

[Smash_Brother]

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Originally posted by: Bill Aurion
Disaster has always been a "Nintendo franchise" considering it has been under Ninty's publishing label since it was first announced... =3

True, but this isn't a simple case of Nintendo buying a 2nd party dev because they're doing well with a franchise.

This is an established studio owned by another publisher, one who won't release the studio without proper monetary compensation (does anyone know how much Nintendo paid?).

There's no doubt that they could have managed and published Disaster without having to buy the studio, and since they were publishing it anyway, it's not like Banco would have had their hand in the pie.

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Originally posted by: PartyBear If Nintendo wanted Sugiura, buying a dominating share of his existing studio might have been easier than building him a new one at Nintendo.

The question isn't whether or not it would be "easier". The question is if it'd be "cheaper".

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Originally posted by: SixthAngel
I don't think its easy to walk up to the founder of a company and simply get them to leave their own company to work for you, taking employees with them and disbanding the company they probably own a chunk/most of.  The company pretty much has to be bought.

First, he owned 4% of it. 4.

Second, employees leave for greener pastures all the time, even founders, ESPECIALLY when they're not getting much money from their current situation.

With that 4%, how much was Banco paying the poor guy? Nintendo could have offered him 20% and he'd still have ample reason to jump ship.

Do you know that a large chunk of the core Blizzard programming staff was hired right out from under them by NCSoft?  

[NWR_pap64]

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Originally posted by: Bill Aurion
Disaster has always been a "Nintendo franchise" considering it has been under Ninty's publishing label since it was first announced... =3

I think what he meant was that Disaster wasn't already an existing Nintendo franchise when it went into development.

But your post makes sense too.

[UltimatePartyBear]

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Originally posted by: Bill Aurion
Disaster has always been a "Nintendo franchise" considering it has been under Ninty's publishing label since it was first announced... =3

Disaster has always been "a brand name under which a series of products is released" for Nintendo?  It's amazing that a game that hasn't even been finished yet is already an entire series.  

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Originally posted by: Smash_Brother

The question isn't whether or not it would be "easier". The question is if it'd be "cheaper".

Easier often means cheaper in business.  Monolith has certain qualities that a hypothetical new Nintendo studio lacks.  Existence, for one.  Plus, he might have wanted to stay where he was, or he may have been unwilling to be assimilated into a larger company.  Perhaps if he really does still own the rights to Xenosaga, he doesn't want to give them up to Nintendo either.  Finally, if things don't work out in the long run, it will be a lot easier for Nintendo to sell his studio than it would be to fire him.

[Nephilim]

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When we say we do not do M&A, there are always exceptions, so let me explain about it. We have never said that we will never do M&A in any situation. Actually, we are not against M&A if Nintendo can absorb the real value of the company. However, in most cases, the value of software developing companies is attached to its people, not the company, which is merely a vessel for its people. So, when we purchase a company, we can purchase the vessel, but we cannot necessarily purchase the contents. Even if we should compete with others to purchase a software company, although we might be able to increase the sheer number of our developers and to gain a short-term result, we do not think it will do good for us in the long run. We have been repeatedly saying that we will not do that kind of M&A.  In the case of Monolith Software, Mr. Sugiura, the president, and Nintendo have a long-term relationship. How Mr. Sugiura thinks is close to how Nintendo thinks. The software Mr. Sugiura would like to create is in line with what Nintendo would like to have for its platform. So, we thought that Nintendo should support this idea, and we decided to take action.  If certain conditions are met, we may do the same thing in the future (M&A). However, we will be very careful and selective, so that we will only partner with people with whom Nintendo can create a long-term working relationship.

for the Lazy ppl debating, Iwata Interview

[Smash_Brother]

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Originally posted by: PartyBear
Easier often means cheaper in business.  Monolith has certain qualities that a hypothetical new Nintendo studio lacks.  Existence, for one.  Plus, he might have wanted to stay where he was, or he may have been unwilling to be assimilated into a larger company.  Perhaps if he really does still own the rights to Xenosaga, he doesn't want to give them up to Nintendo either.  Finally, if things don't work out in the long run, it will be a lot easier for Nintendo to sell his studio than it would be to fire him.

That makes the most sense out of anything, but I still want to see the final tally for money spent on the acquisition.

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for the Lazy ppl debating, Iwata Interview

He completely dodges the question of whether or not Nintendo acquired his franchises, though.

It sounds to me, however, that Iwata wanted to make sure Sugi was cool with the purchase beforehand so they could move forward while acquiring both the company AND its franchises. Like I said (without any reference to the interview), you can buy the company for the franchises, but the people will leave if they don't like the new owners.

In this case, I believe Nintendo wanted both.

Also, doesn't anyone read Cap's posts?

Monolith Soft is usually associated with the Xenosaga series, a series of role-playing games on the PS2 console. Some of MLSI's staff are former employees of Square Co., who transferred to the new company after the creation of Chrono Cross. They were previously involved with the creation of Xenogears, from which the Xenosaga series is derived.

They left their parent company once. Why the HELL wouldn't they do it again?

The bottom line:
Nintendo doesn't need to pay millions of dollars to Banco for something they could have gotten for free.