Nintendo is buying Luigi's Mansion 3 developer Next Level Games

Nintendo has announced its intention to fully acquire Luigi's Mansion 3 developer Next Level Games. 

In a statement released today, the company said that the Canadian developer would become a "wholly owned subsidiary," pending shareholder approval.

Founded in 2002, Next Level has a long history of working with Nintendo. The companies' first partnership was 2005's Super Mario Strikers for the GameCube, which was followed up by a sequel for the Wii, a console for which Next Level continued to develop games throughout the 2000s. More recently, Next Level has been most notably attached to the Luigi's Mansion series, developing 2013's Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon for the 3DS in 2013, and 2019's Luigi's Mansion 3 for the Switch. It's those games which Nintendo draws particular attention to in its notice to shareholders.

Nintendo says that it'll be acquiring all of the outstanding shares in the company, saying that Next Level's owner-directors have been exploring options regarding the sale of those shares. The deal is expected to close on March 1, and Nintendo says that doing so will improve the studio's "development speed and quality" by making communication between the companies easier.

It's not clear what Next Level will be working on after the acquisition. It's been more than a year since the launch of Luigi's Mansion 3, and although some of that time will have been taken up with development of the game's multiplayer DLC, it's safe to assume that a new project could be in its early stages. Nintendo says that the acquisition "will have only minor effects on Nintendo's results for this fiscal year," and that proper earnings forecasts will begin next year, although we probably won't see the results of this deal for a few years yet.

Luigi's Mansion 3 is one of the best Switch games out there.