Sony to become largest shareholder in FromSoftware parent company Kadokawa

Sony and Kadokawa have agreed to form a “strategic capital and business alliance,” the two companies announced in a joint news release Thursday.

On Jan. 7, 2025, Sony will become Kadokawa’s largest stockholder by purchasing 12,054,100 new Kadokawa shares for 50 billion yen (around $320 million). This purchase, combined with a previous round of share acquisition in February 2021, will bring Sony’s total holding in Kadokawa to 10% of the company.

“We are very pleased to conclude this capital and business alliance agreement with Sony,” Kadokawa chief operating officer Takeshi Natsuno said in the news release. “This alliance is expected to not only further strengthen our IP creation capabilities, but also increase our IP media mix options with Sony’s support for global expansion, allowing us to deliver our IP to more users around the world. We are confident that this will greatly contribute to maximizing the value of our IP 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.”

This news comes nearly a month after Kadokawa confirmed a Reuters report about Sony’s interest in acquiring Kadokawa outright. While the video game world recognized the move as potentially making Kadokawa subsidiary FromSoftware’s games exclusive to Sony’s PlayStation platform, the acquisition would also have given Sony a massive foothold in the manga and anime industries thanks to Kadokawa’s dominance in those fields.

As for what the two corporations plan to accomplish together, Sony and Kadokawa are in talks to adapt the latter’s properties into live-action films and television series as well as expand global distribution of existing Kadokawa products. And while none of this technically prevents Sony from scooping up Kadokawa in the future, a separate announcement to Sony investors indicates additional stock purchases are not planned at this time.

“Through this capital and business alliance, we will become the largest shareholder of Kadokawa, which consistently creates a wide variety of IP, including publications and books, such as light novels and comics, as well as games and anime,” Sony chief operating officer/chief financial officer Hiroki Totoki said in the news release. “By combining Kadokawa’s extensive IP and IP 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 IP, and Sony’s long-term vision, ‘Creative Entertainment Vision.’”