Nikkei announced that Nintendo has bought an 80% stake in the Japanese Monolith Soft stock from Namco Bandai, who will keep their 16% holdings in the game developer. Which is kind of funny because Nintendo in turn owns a certain percentage of stock in Namco Bandai, but in this case it’s likely copyrights related.
Monolith Soft of Xenosaga and Baten Kaitos Origins fame are currently developing an unknown Wii RPG, possibly Baten Kaitos DS, and certainly the upcoming Wii game Disaster: Day of Crisis. Nintendo must’ve liked their work on the latter to buy them outright, something (I believe) not seen since they bought the developers of the Metroid Prime series Retro Studios.
Also interesting is that Joystiq mentions Monolith Soft was formed in 1999 by former Square producer Hirohide Sugiura, and other staff include former Square employees involved with Chrono Cross and Xenogears.