Video Games

Sony reportedly eyes buying Kadokawa, owner of Elden Ring dev FromSoftware

Talks are seemingly ongoing

Marco Wutz

Sony / Kadokawa / GLHF

Sony may be flirting with the idea of acquiring Kadokawa, the Japanese media corporation with majority ownership of development studio FromSoftware, which is responsible for hits like Elden Ring as well as the Dark Souls and Armored Core series. Based on two sources familiar with the matter, Reuters reported that talks between the two parties are currently ongoing, though there is no indication as of yet whether they’ll successfully reach a deal.

Spike Chunsoft is another notable video game developer under Kadokawa’s umbrella, being owned by Dwango, with which Kadokawa merged in 2014.

Aside from its video game possessions, Kadokawa is an absolute powerhouse in the anime business. The MyAnimeList overview of the company’s portfolio shows a total of 449 shows as of November 19, 2024, among them hits like Konosuba, Overlord, Re:Zero, Sword Art Online, and Tanya the Evil. Recently, its adaptation of Delicious in Dungeon made waves on Netflix.

An acquisition would provide Sony with a near endless treasure trove of IP, which could be leveraged for everything from new games to TV shows. Several parts of Sony’s business might be able to benefit from this injection.

Sony already owns around 2% of Kadokawa since 2021. That year, the Japanese company also welcomed Chinese media powerhouse Tencent as a partner, which owns around 7%.

It’s been a few rough years for Kadokawa since then, with its chairman having been arrested for bribery connected to the Tokyo Olympics and a ransomware attack leaking tons of internal data online.

Sony’s own affairs are going much smoother, though the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by its rival, Microsoft, has put some pressure on the company’s video game sector alongside the big failure that was the launch of Concord this year.

Published |Modified
Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg

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