Monolith Soft

Origins Monolith Soft was founded by Tetsuya Takahashi, a developer who had previously worked at Nihon Falcom and later at Square, in which the latter was merged into Enix in 2003 to form Square Enix. In 2022 Monolith Soft released Xenoblade Chronicles 3. In 2023, the studio also provided development support to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Nintendo acquired full control of Monolith Soft by December 2024. In 2025, the studio released a remastered version of Xenoblade Chronicles X on the Nintendo Switch. ==Development organization==

Monolith Soft currently has 3 different buildings in Japan dedicated to development, with 2 being located in Tokyo and 1 in Kyoto. The company has shared the organization of its divisions over the years, being organized as the following: • Monolith Soft Tokyo, 1st Production Team: Headed by Tetsuya Takahashi, this is the group responsible for the development of the Xenoblade Chronicles franchise and the games lead in development by Monolith Soft, being the largest team in the studio with over 140 staff. • Monolith Soft Tokyo, 2nd Production Team: This group consists of the Monolith Soft staff in Tokyo that assisted on the development of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom as a support studio, with around 50 employees working on Breath of the Wild and after hiring more staff over the years for the group, having 110 employees working on Tears of the Kingdom, in both cases supporting over 400 developers from the lead developer Nintendo EPD. Staff in this group previously worked on Xenoblade Chronicles, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and Xenoblade Chronicles X before the team was created to work as support for the Nintendo Switch mainline Zelda titles. The team also consists of newer staff that were recruited following the completion of Breath of the Wild, including artists, programmers, planners, designers, and project managers who began working in the company during the development of Tears of the Kingdom. • Monolith Soft Kyoto: Founded in 2011, Monolith Soft's Kyoto studio is a branch dedicated to support other titles, having no lead development roles since it has been established. It has assisted in projects worked on by the Tokyo studio like the Xenoblade Chronicles series, as well as Nintendo EPD projects the Tokyo studio wasn't involved with, such as Pikmin 3, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Splatoon series and recent entries in the Animal Crossing series. The staff at the Kyoto Studio is mainly focused in art, graphics and asset creation, having around 30 employees. ==Games==

Lead development This list is for games to which Monolith Soft contributed substantially, being either a major co-developer or the main developer. Support development This list is for titles where a studio of Monolith Soft acted in a lesser supporting role to the main developer. Refers to development organization for more information about the groups responsible for support development. ==Philosophy==

From the company's inception, Takahashi and Sugiura wanted to give creative freedom to pursue projects outside genre standards, in addition to hiring young staff. An early aim was to encourage younger developers to make their mark in the industry, which at the time was dominated by people in the late 30s and up. This outlook was the reason why younger staff were given charge of the Xenosaga series. Kojima stated that younger developers were preferred as they could bring interesting ideas to a project. According to Sugiura, a major element during the period in which Monolith Soft was under Namco was the focus on creativity. They wanted to balance this with the financial logistics of game design rather than having budgetary concerns stifle the creative flare of the staff. When talking about their Wii U projects in 2012, Monolith Soft staff member Michihiko Inaba stated that the company wanted to show that Japan could keep up with the Western market in terms of ambitious games that pushed the industry forward, comparing Monolith Soft to Bethesda Softworks in this desire. Speaking about the move from Namco Bandai to Nintendo, Sugiura commented that it was a challenge to only be developing games for a single group of consoles. Nintendo endorsed the challenge to Monolith Soft with incentives such as making a particular game within given hardware specifications, providing the company time and resources to accomplish that. Another factor that changed within Monolith Soft's development process was Nintendo's increased quality control, which would moot any project that did not have the desired quality for their systems. This sense of challenge was also echoed by Takahashi, who described both Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles X as being defined by self-imposed challenges to the development team when creating the environments on limited gaming hardware. Monolith Soft's scope and goals are often attributed to Takahashi's drive and ambition. While commonly associated with Japanese role-playing games (JRPGs), Monolith Soft focuses more on making role-playing games for a worldwide audience. Rather than a fixed development structure, Monolith Soft chooses to freely assign staff based on the direction a project takes, in addition to believing in collaborations with other companies on projects rather than developing entirely in-house. According to a 2012 interview with Takahashi, a prerequisite for working at Monolith Soft is a deep passion for games in addition to general knowledge outside the field. As opposed to many other Japanese and Western studios which have come under criticism for excessive overtime and poor working conditions, Monolith Soft strives for a friendly working environment and reasonable hours for its staff. Overtime is also negotiated with the management and receives payment, a rarity in Japanese business. Speaking in relation to this approach, Honne recited the company's motto; "Zero overtime and creative work allowed". Despite the gaming industry's workforce being dominated by men, Monolith Soft has a notably high proportion of female developers working at the company, with more than a quarter of its workforce in total. ==Notes==