Nintendo has agreed to acquire Bandai Namco Studios Singapore, the team credited as the developer behind the papercraft PS5 exclusive Hirogami, and will rename the outfit Nintendo Studios Singapore once the deal completes on 1st April, 2026.
The Singapore team was founded in 2013 and has often operated as a support studio on larger projects, contributing to titles such as Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown and SoulCalibur 6. It has also worked with Nintendo before, assisting on first-party releases including Splatoon 3 and New Pokémon Snap.
Under the new ownership the studio will sit inside Nintendo’s internal development structure and is expected to continue assisting on first-party projects alongside its existing work. Nintendo publicly outlined plans earlier this year to grow its in-house development capacity through targeted purchases and facility expansion; the company published details in a corporate statement on the acquisition.
“We will work to strengthen the internal game development organisation within the Nintendo group. This includes initiatives such as acquiring development companies to make them subsidiaries and augmenting our development facilities, and the construction of Corporate Headquarters Development Center, Building No. 2.”
The move feels different to the large, billion-dollar spending spree Microsoft has been associated with in recent years. Nintendo’s approach appears to be about adding long-term partners and capacity rather than big studio headline buys, which may limit immediate impacts on PlayStation’s slate. For more on how recent platform-holder deals are affecting multiplatform plans, see our piece on Xbox studios and multiplatform releases.
Hirogami launched this year as a PS5 console exclusive, so the studio’s transfer to Nintendo raises questions about future content and support for that release. Nintendo has not announced any changes to existing projects or partnerships linked to the team.
Readers are invited to share thoughts and reactions in the comments and to join the conversation on X, Bluesky, and YouTube.
