Sony Now Owns 10% of FromSoftware's Parent Company Kadokawa - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 January 2025 / 4,602 Views
Sony Group Corporation and Kadokawa Corporation have signed a strategic capital and business alliance agreement.
Sony will be acquiring 12,054,100 new shares of Kadokawa for approximately 50 billion yen. This will make Sony the biggest shareholder in Kadokawa with approximately 10% of its shares, including the share Sony acquired in February 2021.
The two companies in the future plan to discuss specific initiatives for collaboration. This includes adapting Kadokawa's IP into live-action films and TV dramas, co-produce anime works, expand Kadokawa's anime works worldwide through Sony, expand publishing Kadokawa's games, and to develop human resources to promote and expand virtual production.
"We are very pleased to conclude this capital and business alliance agreement with Sony," said Kadokawa Corporation chief executive officer Takeshi Natsuno. "This alliance is expected to not only further strengthen our [intellectual property] creation capabilities, but also increase our [intellectual property] media mix options with Sony’s support for global expansion, allowing us to deliver our [intellectual property] to more users around the world.
"We are confident that this will greatly contribute to maximizing the value of our [intellectual property] and increasing our corporate value in the mid- to long-term. We intend to do our utmost to ensure that our collaborative efforts with Sony produce great results in the global market.”
Sony Group Corporation president, chief operating officer, and chief financial officer Hiroki Totoki added, "Through this capital and business alliance, we will become the largest shareholder of Kadokawa, which consistently creates a wide variety of [intellectual property], including publications and books, such as light novels and comics, as well as games and anime.
"By combining Kadokawa’s extensive [intellectual property] and [intellectual property] creation ecosystem with the strengths of Sony, which has promoted the global expansion of a wide range of entertainment, including anime and games, we plan to work closely together to realize Kadokawa’s ‘Global Media Mix’ strategy, aimed at maximizing the value of its [intellectual property], and Sony’s long-term vision, ‘Creative Entertainment Vision.'"
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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Why do people only focus on the FromSoft part? Kadokawa is a big media conglomerate that is invested in books, manga, anime, and film.
Even just focusing on games, they include Spike Chunsoft. They developed the early Dragon Quest games, the Mystery Dungeon series, Zero Escape, Danganronpa, some Nintendo poublished games, and anime games like the recent Dragon Ball Sparking Zero. There's a whole lot more than just Fromsoft.
On this site? Tbf this is a video game forum...it makes sense why ppl here will fixate on the FromSoft part of the deal. If you were to go onto an anime forum, you'd likely hear all about the anime part. If you're talking in general? Idk i feel like ppl have been talking about both the anime and gaming part, though ig it just depends where you are on the internet.
Might have been to prevent a hostile takeover by a foreign country. It was reportedly Kadokawa's idea to get Sony to do this, and so they only invested around what was needed.
Oh....that wasnt so bad.
This is either the full extent of what Sony is willing to invest or it is a security measure to fend of other potential buyers. If they get outbid at least they will earn a decent amount of pennies.
So that's like... 300$ million US? So much potential there for collaboration to yield good results.... That honestly doesn't seem like that much to spend for that potential.
Let's friggin go best collab in recent memory, not a full on takeover lol
Oh boy I hope sony do not interfere too much on from software management. I am not optimist about it.
And that... is what was sold 2 weeks ago as a "buyout of Fromsoftware by Sony", in ALL western media?
They have NO shame
This has no sense. Sony will buy 8% more of Kadokawa's shares... for getting no real advantage at all,
Ok, as long as they can still work on Nintendo published games. Heard good things about Mario & Luigi Brothership. :)
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