Monolith Soft, the video game developer known recently for the Xenoblade Chronicles series for Nintendo consoles, was founded October 1, 1999, by Tetsuya Takahashi (from Square) with help from Masaya Nakamura (from Namco). This was 25 years ago!
Monolith Soft has released a new video showcasing the characters from its best well-known games, and opened a special website where you can see artwork from its games as well as a message from Hirohide Sugiura, President of Monolith Soft and cofounder alongside Takahashi and Yasuyuki Honne.
The stars of its games, particularly the Xenoblade Chronicles saga (which is made up of four games, including Xenoblade Chronicles X for the Wii U) reunite in this special video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbFFbP-APoU/
“There have been many twists and turns, but I feel that the results of facing and overcoming various problems one by one have led to where we are today”, says Sugiura, who prides in the growth of the studio: the number of staff has increased significantly, and have now three development bases.
“We will never be satisfied with the status quo and will strive to achieve even higher quality so that our company’s history can continue for 100, 200, or even 500 years to come”.
On its early days, the studio released Xenosaga and Baten Kaitos for Namco, as well as some oddities like Disaster: Day of Crisis for the Wii and Project X Zone for Capcom. Its most important title, however, is Xenoblade Chronicles, which established Monolith as one of the strongest modern JRPG studios.
Nintendo acquired the company in 2007 and has become one of its most valuable assets, with a non-stop output of games. Monolith Soft’s latest game is 2022 Xenoblade Chronicles 3, but the studio has also worked in several first party Nintendo games, including Zelda, Animal Crossing and Splatoon series. They are currently working on a new game, which we can expect for Nintendo Switch 2.