Kadokawa Corporation, the current majority owner of Elden Ring, Bloodborne, and Dark Souls developer FromSoftware, has confirmed that it’s recieved an “an initial letter of intent to acquire the Company’s shares” from Sony. However, it’s also said that no decision has been made as to whether the former corp will sell up the latter as of right now.
This follows a report from Reuters yesterday, which cited talks between Sony and Kadokawa as being “ongoing”, with a deal potentially being sealed “in the coming weeks” if this business chatter is successful.
The update from Kadokawa comes via a statement from CEO Takeshi Natsuno, put out as shares in the company have seen their value shoot up following the news, no doubt as shareholders salivate at the idea of possible corporate consolidation, something you’re programmed to love at finance vulture school.
“There are some articles on the acquisition of Kadokawa Corporation (hereinafter ‘the Company’) by Sony Group Inc,” the note reads, “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.”
So, still seemingly a maybe in this bit of potential acquisition chatter, which Sony itself hasn’t commented on yet, as of writing.
As we pointed out in our story on the initial report, if Sony were to buy Kadokawa, it wouldn’t just be getting FromSoft. Danganronpa developer Spike Chunsoft, Octopath Traveler co-developer Acquire, and RPG Maker developer Gotcha Gotcha Games are also under Kadokawa’s umbrella. There’d also be repercussions from an anime and manga perspective, given that’s another huge part of what Kadokawa does, as we wrote about here.
What do you think of the idea of Sony potentially buying Kadokawa and therefore becoming FromSoft’s majority owner? Let us know below!