27th April, 2007 - Nintendo has acquired an 80% stake in Monolith Soft from Namco-Bandai most famous for the Xenosaga series of RPGs on Playstation 2 and the Baten Kaitos RPG series on Nintendo GameCube. It is unknown as to whether the Xenosaga and Baten Kaitos IP's have been transferred to Nintendo, though it should be noted that Nintendo published Baten Kaitos Origins in all regions of its release, though the prequel never got a PAL release. Furthermore the Baten Kaitos series of games have only ever been released on the GameCube and therefore if any IP's were transferred to Nintendo as a result of this acquisition the Baten Kaitos IP would be the most likely.

It should be noted that Namco-Bandai retains a 16% stake in Monolith Soft, the company previously held 96% ownership. The cited reasons for the move include considerations involving the future growth of the Monolith studio and the desire to strengthen its relationship with Nintendo in the console software business.

Monolith Soft is currently working on Disaster: Day of Crisis for Wii, an action style game based on natural disasters, the game was announced at E3 2006 and is said to be released sometime in 2007.

Source:Vooks, IGN

Wow, that's some unexpected news. Here's hoping they fund Xenosaga Episode IV.

Nintendo will devour us all!

This is a surprise. I might have to consider holding onto my Wii now :unsure:

I just hope the Wii does the Xenosaga series justice. Xenosaga thrives on the heavy horsepower but now its prob just gonna look like a last gen game.