Nintendo acquiring the studio that ported Hogwarts Legacy is super interesting

polygon.com:

In a move that has surprised literally everyone, Nintendo has made a studio acquisition. In a rare move, the company bought Shiver Entertainment, a Miami-based port specialist, from embattled Swedish conglomerate Embracer Group.

Shiver, notably, is the studio that somehow managed to bring both Mortal Kombat 1 and Hogwarts Legacy to Nintendo Switch in 2023. Given the enormous gulf in power between the Switch and the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, this was no easy task, and the results left quite a lot to be desired. But merely getting feature-complete and functional versions of these games up and running on Switch could be considered an achievement in itself.

At any rate, Shiver’s work seems to have impressed Nintendo enough that it took the unusual step (for Nintendo) of dipping into its vast cash reserves and actually buying something. (Nintendo is actually the richest company in Japan, going by money in the bank, perhaps precisely because it never spends on itself. Historically, the company has been quite uninterested in late capitalism’s obsession with growth above all else, preferring good, old-fashioned profit — and Scrooge McDuck-style piles of money.)

Nintendo’s press release makes it clear that Shiver’s port expertise is why it bought the studio. It specifically shouts out Shiver’s work on Mortal Kombat 1 and Hogwarts Legacy, notes the studio’s “high-level resources for porting and developing software titles,” and says that after acquisition “Shiver’s focus will remain the same, continuing commissions that port and develop software for multiple platforms including Nintendo Switch.”

But why would Nintendo be interested in acquiring a third-party, work-for-hire port specialist in the first place? There are many studios that specialize in this sort of thing, but they’re rarely acquired by platform-holders like Nintendo. When this does happen, it’s more likely to be a studio that makes shiny, enhanced remasters of older games — like Bluepoint Games, which was