Sony plans to acquire Kadokawa, the parent company of the developers of Elden Ring and Bloodborne

Sony is in negotiations to acquire the media holding company Kadokawa. This is reported by Reuters, citing its own sources.

Kadokawa owns FromSoftware, the developer behind Elden Ring, the Dark Souls series, and the PlayStation exclusive Bloodborne. The holding company also includes Spike Chunsoft, known for the Danganronpa series, Acquire, the studio behind Octopath Traveler, and Gotcha Gotcha Games, creators of the RPG Maker and Pixel Game Maker game development tools.

The media holding has a well-developed division for producing anime and manga, which would complement Sony's assets, as it owns the streaming services Crunchyroll and Funimation.

The potential deal comes amid a major restructuring of Sony's gaming division. In February, the company laid off 900 employees, accounting for 8% of the total PlayStation workforce. The layoffs affected studios such as Insomniac, Naughty Dog, Guerrilla, and Firesprite, while the London PlayStation studio was completely shut down. Subsequently, significant cuts were also made at Bungie, the studio acquired by Sony, due to the commercial struggles of Destiny 2.

According to Reuters, the parties may sign an agreement within the coming weeks. Official representatives from both companies have declined to comment on the information.

Currently, Kadokawa controls 70% of FromSoftware’s shares, Sony owns 14%, and the Chinese company Tencent holds 16%.

Source: IGN