Sony is reportedly in talks to buy Japanese media giant Kadokawa Corporation, the current majority owner of Elden Ring, Bloodborne, and Dark Souls developer FromSoftware, in an attempt to expand its portfolio of entertainment stuff.
This is according to Reuters, which cites two sources as having revealed that talks between Sony and Kadokawa are “ongoing”, with a deal potentially being sealed “in the coming weeks” if this business chatter is successful.
Sony already owns a stake in FromSoftware itself of around 14%, with Chinese giant Tencent owning just over 16%, while Kadokawa has the biggest portion, at around 70%. Both Sony and Kadokawa declined to comment on the story to Reuters.
If Sony were to buy Kadokawa, it wouldn’t just be getting FromSoft, which has titles like Armored Core and Sekiro in its IP basket in addition to the games I mentioned earlier. Game-wise, Kadokawa also owns Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero and Danganronpa developer Spike Chunsoft, Octopath Traveler co-developer Acquire, and RPG Maker developer Gotcha Gotcha Games. Meanwhile, Kadokawa’s got a lot of stuff under its umbrella film, TV, and publishing wise, especially when it comes to anime.
Given Sony already owns Crunchyroll and Funimation, that last bit could well be as big a draw as being able to own the games where you roll around a big beefy boss with a big beefy health bar and die a lot, while having a very nice time if you’ve managed to git gud.
On the gaming front, this news comes in a year when Sony-owned PlayStation has seen both layoffs and studio closures, with it having elected to totally throw in the towel with Concord after pulling that game from sale less than two weeks after release.
What do you think of the idea of Sony potentially buying Kadokawa and therefore becoming FromSoft’s majority owner? Let us know below!