Pokémon Developer Game Freak Is Moving Closer to Nintendo’s Headquarters

During a financial results presentation last week, Nintendo announced that the company is consolidating some of its Tokyo offices into a single space. While Nintendo’s main headquarters are in Kyoto, the company also has four offices (or studios) in Tokyo, including the team behind Super Mario Odyssey. These offices are now being moved into a single headquarters for better operational efficiency and easier development of games. Interestingly, Pokémon developer Game Freak is one of the studios that appears to be moving in with Nintendo, or at least closer to them.

Nintendo’s new Tokyo office will now be located in Kanda-Nishikicho in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward, and Japanese publication Nikkei reports that Game Freak is moving to the same location. Whether they’re moving in to the same office as Nintendo or simply the same area is unknown, but it is an interesting coincidence all the same. Game Freak is still technically an independent studio, but are the primary developer of Pokémon (which is co-owned by Nintendo), which would be reason enough for such a move.

Monolith Soft, the developer of Xenoblade, also has its main studio in Tokyo, but whether they’re moving closer to Nintendo in Chiyoda Ward as well hasn’t been confirmed yet. Monolith Soft already has three three offices in Tokyo, spread across the Meguro and Shinagawa wards. The Shinagawa office was opened last year, as part of an effort to make collaboration between Monolith’s 200-strong staff easier.

“Currently, our group is divided among four offices in Tokyo for operations including development,” Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said last week. “This separation of locations is inconvenient in terms of operational efficiency, and for that and other reasons these locations will be consolidated into a single office together with a part of our group companies to create a system that can boost operational efficiency.”