Monolith Soft

Monolith Soft, Ltd.

Type	Subsidiary of Nintendo
Industry	Video games
Founded	October 1, 1999
Headquarters	Tokyo, Japan
Key people	Hirohide Sugiura Tetsuya Takahashi Yasuyuki Honne Koh Kojima
Products	Xeno series Baten Kaitos series Disaster: Day of Crisis Soma Bringer
Number of employees	123 (as of May 2014)[1]
Parent	Nintendo
Website	www.monolithsoft.co.jp

Monolith Soft, Inc. (株式会社モノリスソフト, Kabushiki-Gaisha Monorisu Sofuto) is a Japanese video game development studio. The company was formed in 1999 by Tetsuya Takahashi shortly after the completion of the first game he was in charge of at Squaresoft - Xenogears. When Squaresoft did not move forward with a Xenogears sequel, Takahashi broke away from the company and formed his own, in order to further focus on more titles in the Xeno series. From 2000 to 2006, the development team worked as a subsidiary of Namco to produce three more titles in the Xeno series, Xenosaga Episode 1, Episode II, and Episode III, along with a variety of other titles, most notably Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean and Baten Kaitos Origins.

In 2007, Nintendo bought all shares from Namco, making the company a subsidiary of Nintendo. In addition to assisting Nintendo on various projects, they continued the Xeno series with Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles X on Nintendo platforms. They're also responsible for the tactical RPG series Project X Zone.

History

The company was founded on October 1, 1999 by producer Hirohide Sugiura and director Tetsuya Takahashi after they left Square and accepted an investment from Namco.^[2] As of May 6, 2007, Nintendo owned controlling interest in the company after Bandai Namco Holdings sold 80% of its 96% stake in Monolith Soft to Nintendo. This went into effect May 1, 2007.^[3] Later Namco sold the remaining 16%, making Monolith Soft a first-party developer for Nintendo.

The company announced on July 8, 2011 that they were opening up an additional studio in Kyoto, Japan, which had around 30 employees by July 2013.^[4] They are currently co-developing games for both the Wii U^[5] and the Nintendo 3DS.^[6]

On 16 October 2015, Monolith Soft posted "urgent" mass recruitment job openings for both the Kyoto and Tokyo offices, particularly for 3D designers.^[7][8] In an interview with series director Takahashi, he said he would like to return to a more story-driven JRPG game like Xenoblade Chronicles after the more game-play focused Xenoblade Chronicles X. He would also like to continue the Xenoblade series by using a variety of settings rather than using the fantasy and science fiction settings from each game respectively.^[9]

List of games developed

Tokyo Software Development Studio

Kyoto Software Development Studio

References

External links

• Official website

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