Sony Is Now Largest Shareholder Of FromSoftware Parent Kadokawa Corporation

It’s official.

Sony has signed a strategic capital and business alliance agreement with Kadokawa Corporation to conduct a third-party allotment on 7 January 2025 to acquire 12,054,100 new shares of Kadokawa Corporation for approximately 50 billion yen (US$320 million).

This turns Sony into Kadokawa Corporation’s largest shareholder, holding approximately 10 percent of shares.

Kadokawa Corporation is the parent company of numerous subsidiaries across publishing, film and visuals, and cross-media, including ACQUIRE, FromSoftware, Gotcha Gotcha Games, and Spike Chunsoft.

The press release states:

Kadokawa and Sony historically have collaborated on various projects, and through this capital and business alliance, intend to further strengthen our collaboration to maximize both companies’ [intellectual property] value globally and facilitate wider and deeper collaboration, such as potential joint investments in the content field, joint discovery of new creators, and joint promotion of further media mixes of both companies’ [intellectual property].

In the future, the two companies plan to discuss specific initiatives for collaboration, such as initiatives to adapt Kadokawa’s [intellectual property] into live-action films and TV dramas globally, co-produce anime works, expand global distribution of Kadokawa’s anime works through the Sony Group, further expand publishing of Kadokawa’s games, and develop human resources to promote and expand virtual production.

Kadokawa Corporation chief executive officer Takeshi Natsuno said:

“We are very pleased to conclude this capital and business alliance agreement with Sony. 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.’”

What does this mean for the future? Will FromSoftware games be PlayStation exclusives? We’ll have to wait and see what lies beyond.