To summarise, it’s the team that has been working with Nintendo for quite a while, but now they have formally announced it as a separate studio. Some interesting tidbits and history from the article:
The team has already been active for a number of years, and has worked on such titles as Super Smash Bros for 3DS & Wii U, Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Mario Kart 8, Mario Kart Deluxe, Mario Kart Tour, Arms and Mario Sports Superstars.
According to stats on the site, the team consists of 152 employees, 32% of which are new gradates. Around 40% of the team are artists, with the rest made up of designers and programmers.
Some job listing on the studio site:
Some listings are for “a 3D action game project commissioned by Nintendo” while another is for a game design position that involves “developing consumer games that will be commissioned by Nintendo”.
Sounds like Namco is now technically a 2nd party developer now?
That one studio maybe, but the majority of their games are still third party.
Hence the technicality.
Single studio. They have a shit ton of other development studios doing other projects e.g a bunch of popular anime titles like Naruto, One Piece, Dragon Ball, Gundam, SAO and such, then their own major franchises (e.g Pacman, Tekken, Tales, Taiko, Ace Combat, iM@s, God Eater)
Theyre far from being considered 2nd party, thry just happen to be rented out by projects that happen to be under nintendo or someone who ia contracted to finish a project for nintendo but doesnt work there (e.g sakurai)