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Next Level Games Set To Exclusively Work For Nintendo
Luigi's Mansion 2 for the 3DS may have seemed like an internal Nintendo game, but it was actually designed by the independent studio Next Level Games in Canada, which is happy to keep working for the Japanese publisher.
Next Level Games already has a good working relationship with Nintendo. The developer helped design the Super Mario Strikers soccer game for the GameCube as well as Punch-Out!! on the Wii. However, after working with publisher like Activision, Sega, and Ubisoft on games such as Transformers: Cybertron Adventures and Captain America: Super Soldier, it seems that the company is happy to remain exclusively with Nintendo.
"We are doing only Nintendo products now," said Next Level Games co-founder Jason Carr in an interview with Gamasutra. "We're super happy with our relationship with Nintendo. There's no reason to look anywhere else. They keep giving us better and better IP to work with, and as long as we do our job and make good games for them there's no reason for us to venture out."
"There are a lot of benefits to working with a first party," added Carr. "Nintendo's great. They give you the time to make the games good. They've done really well – the Wii's done really well, the DS has done really well, the Wii U is not the strongest start but we trust that they'll come up with something to get it going, and the 3DS was a blast to work on."
Next Level Games hasn't announced what it will be working on next, but we wouldn't mind another Punch-Out!!
Our Take
This is pretty good news for Next Level Games. It's hard to be an independent developer, because you often have a lot of expenses to pay and you may not know where your next paycheck is coming from. If you make one bad game, your company could be bankrupt. Thankfully Nintendo knows a few things about games, and since Next Level games has proven itself to be a capable developer, this could be a mutually beneficial agreement.
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