Sony becomes the largest shareholder in Elden Ring and Dark Souls' parent company, despite acquisition chatter

Sony has been in talks to acquire Kadokawa, the massive anime and manga publisher that just so happens to own FromSoftware as well, for weeks now, but the negotiations haven't ended in a total buyout as many expected it to. Sony is instead set to become the media conglomerate's largest shareholder.

Rather than an acquisition, the two companies today "signed a strategic capital and business alliance agreement" that will make Sony its "largest shareholder, holding approximately 10% of its shares, including the shares Sony previously acquired in February 2021," on January 7, 2025, according to a press release.

With the buffed-up investment, the duo intends "to further strengthen our collaboration to maximize both companies' IP 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' IP." What that means specifically won't be clear for a while, but the announcement mentions the possibility of turning Kadokawa's extensive library into live-action films or series, and distributing its countless anime globally, probably via Crunchyroll. 

Despite being a major player in the video game world, FromSoftware isn't directly mentioned in the announcement, probably because the Dark Souls studio is still a relatively small piece of Kadokawa's pie, which has its fingers in everything from adult books to physical merch. Sony only mentions that it can "further expand publishing of Kadokawa's games." Still, this makes a potential Elden Ring adaptation more likely after George R.R. Martin shot down film rumors earlier this year.

Either way, this wasn't the full acquisition many were expecting. Kadokawa itself had confirmed that the two companies were talking about a total buyout, so what changed? Well, as we reported at the time, there was also some behind-the-scenes chatter that Sony wasn't interested in the non-entertainment, non-nerdy, non-things-like-Souls parts of Kadokawa, and was hesitant to dip its toes into businesses it had little experience with. But that's all guesswork - I wasn't actually in the room.

Elden Ring is officially FromSoftware’s biggest hit, outselling the entire Dark Souls series by two million copies.