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So another Embracer owned company finally got out of the company's grasp, and from a very surprising source: Nintendo. Unlike Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo hasn't been very active in buying up other studios. Last studio Nintendo bought was Next Level Games, makers of Mario Strikers, Punch-Out Wii, and Luigi's Mansion 2 and 3, and Nintendo took a surprisingly long time to buy them as despite working with them since 2005, they didn't finally buy the studio until 2021, and before NLG Nintendo's last big acquisition was Monolith Software in 2007 where they bought them off Bandai-Namco.

Now with Embracer having infamously screwed up their business by putting all their bets on a deal with Saudi Arabia that fell through, they're either closing up studios (like the newly reformed Free Radical, who were going to make a new TimeSplitters, which now is no longer happening and I'm still mad about that) or selling them off (like Saber Interactive was able to go independent when one of their founders used one of their own firms to buy back all of Embracer's stake in the company).

While Sony and Microsoft haven't made any attempts to save any of the companies under Embracer (at least not yet), Nintendo has stepped in to save one: Shiver Entertainment. Now of all the studios no doubt this is making some of y'all go "who?" as Shiver isn't exactly a big name. Shiver's main area of expertise is in porting, as they're the studio that managed to get Mortal Kombat 11, MK1, and Hogwarts Legacy running on the Switch. Nintendo even mentions in their press release regarding the purchase they do expect to continue to use Shiver mainly for assistance with porting games to their platforms, only now Nintendo are the ones whom other companies will need to approach to inquire about Shiver's services, and Shiver will now have better access to resources directly from Nintendo in order to make higher quality ports (Mortal Kombat 1 was pretty rough at launch but I heard it's gotten way better, but from what I understand Hogwarts Legacy Switch is actually a shockingly decent port).

In regards to their ability to port titles, [and if that's what they will be assigned to do] I'd expect them to take titles over from other games that haven’t been ported yet to do so with their new console. I am and many others are expecting the next console to be backwards compatible at the very least with switch games. That means both digital and physical copies.

Also I didn’t know the Hogwarts Legacy port was decent. Maybe I’ll pick it up upon another trip to Gamestop (though not the immediate trip as I’m saving that for TTYD)