Luigi's Mansion dev pledges exclusivity to Nintendo

Next Level Games, most recently responsible for Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, will work exclusively on Nintendo games. "We are doing only Nintendo products now," studio co-founder Jason Carr said in a statement.

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Next Level Games, most recently responsible for Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, will work exclusively on Nintendo games. "We are doing only Nintendo products now," studio co-founder Jason Carr said in a statement.

Working with Nintendo exclusively isn't a huge surprise coming from the studio, which has worked on a number of first-party games, including Super Mario Strikers and Punch-Out. However, the studio has dabbled in non-Nintendo work, including the multi-platform Captain America: Super Soldier for Xbox 360 and PS3.

"There are a lot of benefits to working with a first party," Carr told Gamasutra when explaining the studio's move to exclusivity. "Nintendo's great. They give you the time to make the games good."

Andrew Yoon was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    January 9, 2014 6:00 PM

    Andrew Yoon posted a new article, Luigi's Mansion dev pledges exclusivity to Nintendo.

    Next Level Games, most recently responsible for Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, will work exclusively on Nintendo games. "We are doing only Nintendo products now," studio co-founder Jason Carr said in a statement.

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      January 9, 2014 6:07 PM

      [deleted]

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      January 9, 2014 6:27 PM

      Hope they're working on a new Punch-Out game. The Wii one was amazing.

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        January 9, 2014 6:28 PM

        I hope someone is working on something new for Nintendo. These franchises are tired as fuck.

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          January 9, 2014 7:11 PM

          People say that, then they go right back to playing another annualized sequel on their PS or Xbox. It seems like Nintendo gets singled out for some reason.

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            January 9, 2014 7:40 PM

            Your flavor is the best flavor.

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            January 9, 2014 7:58 PM

            And, Nintendo gets way more creative with each version of there "tired" franchises than stuff like CoD or Madden ever is.

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              January 9, 2014 8:03 PM

              Not to mention the game mechanics, programming, and design of Nintendo games are often A++ first tier.

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          January 9, 2014 7:12 PM

          Yes, look how successful W101 was.

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            January 10, 2014 5:05 AM

            Or Zombi U

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              January 14, 2014 12:33 AM

              Zombi U is really great, got it as my first game from the Wii U eShop Christmas sales.

              Can't believe that game isn't more famous, it alone should've sold a lot of Wii U consoles. A genius design that if you die you wake up as another and your previous character's items are left where you died and the character continues as a zombie, creepy as hell!

              Also the gamepad is really intensively designed to be used with the game.

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          January 10, 2014 5:51 AM

          No shit. Agreed. Tired children games. I want something mature from Nintendo.

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            January 10, 2014 7:17 AM

            What give you the impression nintendo are the right people to give you a "mature" game?

            "Fuck disney, they keep doing cartoons, i won't take them seriously until they release some porno."

            I'd rather nintendo focus on doing what they've always done best, using their amazing catalog of characters while breathing new life and original ideas into current genres.

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            January 10, 2014 8:11 AM

            Define "children [sic] games"? What, you don't like vibrant, colorful games? You need blood, guts, and tiggo bitties? That's "mature"? 'Kay.

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              January 10, 2014 2:31 PM

              He must want "mature" games like Gears, Call of Duty, God of War...

              LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

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          January 10, 2014 7:16 AM

          Nintendo uses the same franchises over and over as it allows them to be experimental with gameplay.

          Look how Mario has evolved since the 90s, or zelda, or metroid. These games have been allowed to change and experiment because they used recognised franchises that are guaranteed to grab customer attention. If they invented a whole new universe with each instalment, then nintendo would follow the path a lot of other publisher do, which is just following whatever the current flavour of the month is, be it modern combat shooters or whatever.

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        January 10, 2014 7:21 AM

        Oh god don't tease me. The Wii version was one of my favorite games of last gen.

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          January 10, 2014 8:12 AM

          I wish it would have supported the GameCube and Classic Controller. It was fine otherwise.

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            January 10, 2014 8:19 AM

            Hrm, I always used the wiimote sideways. Classic controller support would have been nice though.

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              January 10, 2014 8:25 AM

              To be honest, I've never been a fan of holding the Wiimote sideways. The remote is bulky, the d-pad is small, and the edges of the d-pad cut into my fingers. I prefer Nintendo's larger, smoother, more traditional d-pads like the one on the Classic Controller, which, of course, was modeled after the SNES dog bone-shaped controller.

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      January 9, 2014 6:35 PM

      It's his funeral.

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      January 9, 2014 7:14 PM

      [deleted]

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      January 9, 2014 7:51 PM

      So they're going steady with Nintendo?

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      January 9, 2014 9:05 PM

      Haters gonna hate.

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      January 10, 2014 2:03 AM

      "They give you the time to make the games good." That is pretty rare now.

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      January 10, 2014 6:01 AM

      i think it's weird how in the worst of times there's always one or two devs willing to do some kind of weird suicide-pact-like pledge to nintendo. during the n64 it was rare, during GC it was retro.

      you'll notice during the wii era there wasn't really a second party dev that managed to reap the benefits of that system's success. nintendo seems like a bad partner.

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        January 10, 2014 6:03 AM

        (i'm speaking mostly western devs here, of course)

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        January 10, 2014 6:05 AM

        Retro made DKC Returns in the Wii era, which sold quite well. They also helped out with the 3DS Mario Kart, again which sold fine.

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          January 10, 2014 6:25 AM

          ah that's true. I remember DKCR not getting much notice, and I thought it didn't sell very well, but I guess it was a sleeper hit.

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            January 10, 2014 6:52 AM

            they also ported that game to 3DS

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              January 10, 2014 6:52 AM

              and it did well enough to warrant the coming sequel

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          January 10, 2014 7:21 AM

          Also i'm pretty sure Rare did extremely well with goldeneye, perfect dark, donkey kong racing, donkey kong 64 etc.

          In fact it wasn't until MS bought them that the talent fled that company.

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            January 10, 2014 7:30 AM

            Oh, I agree, he just specifically mentioned the Wii era.

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        January 10, 2014 6:05 AM

        Yeah, but stuff like Luigi's Mansion sells pretty well, doesn't it?

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          January 10, 2014 6:09 AM

          Clearly it's doing well enough for them to be willing to make the commitment.

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        January 10, 2014 6:19 AM

        [deleted]

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        January 10, 2014 6:24 AM

        luigi's mansion is probably one of the best games that you can buy on the 3DS which is their successful platform. to me it sounds like a good idea to partner up and make more great games for that platform using Nintendos characters. slap mario in your game and it's going to get people's attention no matter what.

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        January 10, 2014 7:04 AM

        Next Level made Super Mario Strikers Charged which was an amazing Wii game.

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      January 11, 2014 11:09 AM

      People are so skeptical cus the truck is not 2 lanes wide.

      Truck's gotta be 2 lanes wide guys! and covered in gore and shit or it's for teh kiddiez!!!111

      Fack you! A name change and you're fooled every single year you simpleton.

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      January 14, 2014 12:36 AM

      Luigi's Mansion 2 is one of the best games on 3DS so this is great news, nice to see a dev get more dedicated to Nintendo since teams like Next Level Games and Retro will make awesome stuff with the Nintendo properties.

      They will get a lot of help also with their project from the Nintendo dev teams.

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