Kadokawa Confirms Report of Sony's Intent to Acquire the Company - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 December 2024 / 3,250 Views
Kadokawa Corporation has released a statement confirming the reports that Sony Group Corporation is in talks to acquire Kadokawa Corporation.
Kadokawa Corporation has yet to make a decision if it wants to sell to Sony Group Corporation.
"There are some articles on the acquisition of Kadokawa Corporation (hereinafter "the Company") by Sony Group Inc," reads the statement. "However, this information is not announced by the Company.
"The Company has received an initial letter of intent to acquire the Company's shares, but no decision has been made at this time. If there are any facts that should be announced in the future, we will make an announcement in a timely and appropriate manner."
Sony as of March 2024 has a two percent stake in Kadokawa and a 14 percent stake in FromSoftware.
Kadokawa Corporation owns a number of video game publishers and developers, as well as companies in film and visual, and cross media. Video game subsidiaries at Kadokawa includes Elden Ring developer FromSoftware, Acquire, Spike Chunsoft, and Gotcha Gotcha Games.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Terrible news. -_-
100%
anybody know the specific market share Sony would have in the manga/anime market(s) if such an acquisition were to go through?
Sony has no manga or light novel presence so they would just gain kadokawa's. in anime they'd gain some ip but most anime is licensed though bidding wars they wouldn't become the largest publisher.
okay then im very confused on this whole situation lol. I thought the point of this acquisition was centered around the anime/manga aspect? Sony already owns CrunchyRoll, for instance. How much more power do they gain over the entire market? Or am I misunderstanding? (In other words, what would Sony gain from this acquisition other than a whole lotta FromSoftware stake?)
Crunchyroll is just a distributor and streaming service. they get licenses of anime made in japan to bring it to the west. Sony gains the IP that kadokawa owns but people are exaggerating how much that is.
That was my question. She currently owns Crunchyroll, Aniplex and Funimation.
I rather Kadokawa with Sony than Kadokawa with Kakao. Rumors has it that it was Kadokawa that went to Sony to discuss about it.
From Software alone would make this acquisition worth it.
All is right with the world
Demons souls is ps exclusive
No demons no dark souls and so forth
They don't need to sell . From software makes huge money for them
"From software makes huge money for them"
Since Namco is the one that publishes, Namco is the one who gets most of the money. From gets a tiny fraction of what you'd expect. The 20 million copies, meant well over a billion dollars of revenue, between their FY 2022 and 2023, which would have included lots of other games, Kadokawa only reports a revenue of $350 million.
Hello the-pi-guy. Could you please respond to Trentonator’s comment (responding to my og) regarding the purpose of this acquisition? I hear you talking a lot on it, and I feel like his comment contradicts many of your own? Could you explain? I’m very confused on all of this lol. Just looking for info. I would rlly appreciate it.
I don't think we're necessarily saying opposing things.
Kadokawa + Sony is far from any kind of monopoly. They have their hand in a bunch of things, but anime/manga is a pretty sizable industry. They own a number of anime and manga, and have their hand in a lot more. But those industries are pretty large. Kadokawa owns several anime studios.
Kadokawa's publication part of their business is like 8x bigger revenue wise than their gaming business. It's a little tricky because their gaming business is smaller than it "should" be, because From Soft doesn't self publish. For the billion that Elden Ring made, Kadokawa only gets a small fraction of that. They are practically more valuable to Sony, than Kadokawa since Sony can publish their games.
But if the gaming part was all they wanted, they could reasonably buy the gaming part for cheaper.
Anime, Manga, Gaming are probably all big considerations for this.
i see. So, Sony’s pretty much looking to expand on anime, manga, and a little bit with gaming (little bit since Sony doesn’t rlly gain much profit from FromSoft, tho they would gain heavy influence in FromSoft’s decisions and direction moving forward), if I’m understanding correctly? That makes a lot more sense.
But Sony doesn't share so keeping it exclusive would be detrimental to from software
hope this pulls through.
Why exactly?
PlayStation already gets all of their games
The only thing this would accomplish is giving them the option to keep games off of Xbox/Nintendo and an even tighter choke hold on the Anime and Manga industry
Aniplex already releases loads of games on their own seperate from playstation. Many of them never even release on playstation platforms at all. That's what would happen with kadokawa.
FromSoft would probably benefit from the technical side since very few PlayStation first party games have technical issues, and the big releases have absolutely amazing production quality.
Can apply the same logic to MS with ActiBlizz, why get them? They already get all their games
Only thing it would accomplish is giving them the option to keep games off PS / Nintendo....
I'm not a fan of MS buying ABK... but it isn't the same logic
PlayStation actually got a ton of ABK exclusivity... the biggest one I remember being COD MW2 Remaster was PlayStation exclusive for 1 year. Not to mention dozens of exclusive DLCs and betas/early access with COD.
Plus MS does NOT have the option from keeping games off PS/Nin given they signed deals to get the government to approve the deal.
Again, not defending the deal but this is not the same logic.
You think MS went out and spent 70B because they cared at all that PS had a bunch of timed exclusive content? Content MS could easily outbid for but didn't care enough to do so.
Funny how it's so easy for Sony to outbid MS. Guess they just care more for their ecosystem.
Also those deals, have expiration dates. 10yrs only and you can bet MS would pull everything off rival consoles the moment it expires.
A deal, whatever that agreement is, is always two-sided.
A higher offer doesn't neccessarily mean developers/publishers find the Xbox platform more attractive than Playstation's. Playstation's got some pretty good arguments, too, don't you think?
And outbidding Playstation with ridiculously higher offers ain't cost-effective, either.
Just look at Xbox' last 4 quarter reports.
You can clearly see WHY they had bought ABK initially. They needed IP, they really did, and revenue. Without ABK numbers their financial reports would have been very concerning to say at least.
Because the brand needs to be cost-effective on its own.
Essay Pro