Almost exactly a month ago, the news broke out that Sony and Kadokawa were in talks for the former to acquire the latter. That didn’t quite pan out, but what happened instead may be the next best thing, with the former being the largest shareholder of the latter.
As Sony announced, it is acquiring 12,054,100 new Kadokawa shares at the cost of about JPY50 billion (~RM1.43 billion). With all of these, the former will own approximately 10% of the latter. While the deal has been signed, the actual third-party allotment is set to happen on 7 January 2025.
Surprisingly, the result of Sony being Kadokawa’s largest shareholder is not as different as you may expect to the former completely acquiring the latter. As a result of this business deal between the two, the statement notes that both companies will be discussing plans to adapt the latter’s IPs into live-action film and drama, as well as getting said IP an expanded global distribution.
Technically, the same can be said about Kadokawa’s games which, if you remember, are developed by the likes of Spike Chunsoft and FromSoftware. That being said, it remains to be seen what sort of influence Sony will have over such games, such as if the next FromSoftware games are at risk of being PlayStation exclusives.
(Source: Sony)
