The Frustrating Mystery Of Who Makes Nintendo Games

While this is purely speculative, I can take a guess as to why Nintendo takes this approach. When Nintendo reveals a new game, the company wants you to see it as a Nintendo game–not an Intelligent Systems title, or a Grezzo production, or a HAL Laboratory original. By framing it as such, Nintendo is presumably hoping that you do away with preconceptions relating to the developers’ previous games and make a judgment on the game once you actually play the final product.

That practice has the potential to save some consumers from certain pitfalls; for instance, it could avoid pre-release discourse centering on the studio’s track record instead of the game itself. That type of dialogue could lead to people unfairly evaluating a game before it’s even out. I know I would be mortified if someone prematurely judged Next Level Games’ titles solely based on its work on the ill-fated Metroid Prime: Federation Force.

It’s also a way for Nintendo to strengthen its brand. Being a Nintendo-published game comes with some level of shine and prestige, no matter who made it. When a Nintendo game succeeds, no matter if it was a partner studio or one of the company’s in-house and generically named EPD studios, you can owe it to Nintendo’s special touch. And when one fails, then Nintendo can own the mistake instead of the studio.

But as the years have passed, Nintendo appears to be deemphasizing its subsidiary studios and its development partners, and there’s a magic that’s lost as a result.

There’s a sense of joy I got from some of Nintendo’s GameCube-era titles, which featured the developers behind those games loudly and at the very start. Whether it was Waluigi yelling “CAMELOT!” in Mario Power Tennis or Daisy screeching “NEXT LEVEL GAMES!” before Super Mario Strikers, the pride and passion from these studios was palpable.

I always enjoyed how the original three Metroid Prime games opened with “Nintendo and Retro Studios present” before the title screen, highlighting how essential the talent from Retro was to these games. Fast forward to Metroid Prime 4 in 2025, which shortens that vanity card to “Nintendo Presents,” as if it’s ashamed to acknowledge its Austin-based affiliate studio. I can’t even find the Retro Studios logo on the back of the box. At most, you’ll see studio names like Intelligent Systems or Monolith Soft in the copyright notice at the bottom of the title screen.

And while you don’t want potential customers to be stuck with preconceptions based on who’s making a game, more information is always better for making informed decisions. I want to know if Good-Feel is making a new Yoshi game, because that studio excels in crafting unique art styles. I want to know if Next Level is making a new Luigi’s Mansion, because the folks there are particularly great at making expressive character animations. I want to know if MercurySteam is behind a new Metroid (which appears to be the case for Ravenous), because while that studio makes a damn good Metroid, it also caught flak for not crediting certain developers, received accusations of crunch and intimidation, and recently underwent layoffs.

Nintendo is always going to do things its way–it wouldn’t be Nintendo if it weren’t. But the least it can do is give its fans a better idea of what they’re getting.