Xeno- relation?

[nfitc1]

So with the today-announcement of Shulk to the new Smash roster I had to look him up. He's the Xenoblade protagonist, great. Another rep from a game I've never played.

Is/was there any relation to the Xenoblade series and the Xenogears/Xenosaga series? I had assumed there was but Xenoblade is apparently a Nintendo series. Learned something new today.

 

[Covarr]

Xenogears was led by Tetsuya Takahashi while he was at Square. He eventually left and founded Monolith Soft for the express purpose of developing more Xeno games when it was apparent Square didn't want to do a sequel. Xenosaga, and all its episodes and spinoffs, were developed by Monolith Soft and published by Bandai Namco. This is not officially a sequel to Xenogears, but it has many thematic similarities. It is a spiritual successor.

Eventually Nintendo bought Monolith Soft. Xenoblade Chronicles was developed by Monolith Soft and published by Nintendo. Again, it shares themes with Xenosaga and Xenogears, but exists as a spiritual successor in its own continuity.

 

[nfitc1]

Ah that makes sense. I hate it when companies switch franchises like that. Kinda how Star Ocean and Tales series were co-developed by a team that split.

 

[Covarr]

In theory, Squaresoft could make another Xenogears game, or Bandai Namco could make another Xenosaga game, even without any input or approval from Tetsuya Takahashi. They own the intellectual properties, which is why he keeps starting over. The major issue here is that Tetsuya Takahashi wants to keep doing the same series, but he doesn't have the sense to demand ownership of his IPs as part of the contract when he creates them. If he could wrangle personal ownership of a property he made, he'd be able to keep working on actual sequels instead of spiritual successors no matter what company he worked for.