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[Reuters] Exclusive-Sony in talks to buy media powerhouse behind 'Elden Ring', sources say

Setsuna Mudou

Setsuna Mudou

Member
So Bloodborne 2 you say??

Excited College Basketball GIF by UNC Tar Heels


And more content for Crunchyroll, aka the best deal in anime!

troll trolling GIF
 
nial

nial

Member
Kadokawa has few stable shareholders and, with the founding family no longer on the management team, the company has lost its identity, so there have been talks of an acquisition for some time.
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There was talk of a foreign acquisition of Seven & I Holdings, so they must have been rushing to find a buyer for the domestic company. Recently, Korean financial institutions and funds have been emerging as top shareholders.
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q9tw6qS.png

 
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killatopak

killatopak

Member
So rather than be bought by international companies they went with local which was Sony. Not sure why Tencent was able to buy shares though or is this before this current one?
 
nial

nial

Member
James Sawyer Ford said:
Better they sell to another Japanese entertainment company than anyone else really

And it fits Sony’s strategic goals in multiple areas
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It also looks like the Japanese people are cheering for Sony to acquire Kadokawa, which seems to be through difficult times management-wise.

Can't blame them, it would be tragic to see a cultural domestic powerhouse under Tencent or some Korean financial institution.
 
Z

Z O N E

Member
James Sawyer Ford said:
Better they sell to another Japanese entertainment company than anyone else really

And it fits Sony’s strategic goals in multiple areas
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If the company was smaller, I would say it doesn't matter, but with Kadakawa having a piece of pie almost everywhere, it won't surprise me if they went with Sony.

The only downside would be the Anime/Manga side as Sony loves their censorships in Anime/Manga... So that's going to suck REALLY bad, whilst giving Sony a much bigger stake in the Anime Industry as a whole.
 
DavidGzz

DavidGzz

Gold Member
Ebrietas said:
They would be celebrating if MS were buying Kadokawa.
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With MS we wouldn't be worried about no PC. Situations like Bloodborne where a game is left to rot on PS4. Sure, you can play it on PS5 but it looks and runs like shit. Demon's Souls, after 4+ years is still PS only for example. Maybe that wouldn't be the case with From Software, but we don't want it to chance.

It's not just being able to play a game. I have the Pro, I'm fine with buying games for PS, for me Mods are huge. I put more time into Dark Souls 3 mods than the base game. If Demon's Souls was on PC a year later, we'd have 3+ years of mods to extend the life of the game. I'm fine with Sony buying FS if we get games on PC a year later. I have no problems double dipping. But their amazing games festering on a closed box? No thanks.
 
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ULTROS!

ULTROS!

People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
ap_puff

ap_puff

Banned
DavidGzz said:
With MS we wouldn't be worried about no PC. Situations like Bloodborne where a game is left to rot on PS4. Sure, you can play it on PS5 but it looks and runs like shit. Demon's Souls, after 4+ years is still PS only for example. Maybe that wouldn't be the case with From Software, but we don't want it to chance.

It's not just being able to play a game. I have the Pro, I'm fine with buying games for PS, for me Mods are huge. I put more time into Dark Souls 3 mods than the base game. If Demon's Souls was on PC a year later, we'd have 3+ years of mods to extend the life of the game. I'm fine with Sony buying FS if we get games on PC a year later. I have no problems double dipping. But their amazing games festering on a closed box? No thanks.
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With Sony owning Nixxes now I don't think you have to worry
 
AmuroChan

AmuroChan

Member
SonGoku said:
Hope not, i don't want them to turn Souls games into woke games
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It'll be fine. Their Japanese studios aren't making woke games. Gran Turismo isn't woke. Astro Bot isn't woke. The woke stuff isn't some corporate directive coming from the CEO. Sony generally lets their studios make the games that they want to make.
 
yurinka

yurinka

Member
killatopak said:
So rather than be bought by international companies they went with local which was Sony. Not sure why Tencent was able to buy shares though or is this before this current one?
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In a lot of cases Tencent invests in companies to later sell at a higher price and (adding the dividends they got) get profit from it.

Regarding FromSoft shares, maybe Kadokawa needed more money for FromSoft so sold some stocks to Sony and Tencent. Maybe telling Tencent "hey, if you buy this now for this price, in 2 or 3 years we'll buy it back from you at minimum that other price" or something like that.

Regarding Kadokawa shares, maybe Tencent just invested on them because they looked promising, but didn't have intentions on acquiring the company.

As an example, I think a couple years ago or so, Tencent invested in a minority stake of two Spanish game studios. They did grow, and the game they were working on didn't perform as well as desired, so Tencent didn't invest more on them. They went bankrupt because depended on their investment and didn't find another investor on time to replace them.
 
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yurinka

yurinka

Member
DeepEnigma said:
Kadokawa Corp.'s market value is $2.92 billion, with 141.78 million shares outstanding.
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Add there maybe a 50% premium, and then some extra money on top for retention bonuses, restructuring and other acquisition and integration costs. I'd say a total cost of $5B including everything would be more than enough.

Pejo said:
You forget that Steam won't sell Sony games with forced PSN to regions that aren't officially supported by PSN/Sony? There's quite a bigger list than you'd think:


You could argue that you could use VPN tricks or whatever to circumvent this, but that's putting your entire account in jeopardy just to buy Sony games.
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At least in case of PSN, Sony sells in these regions but users from there just don't have a dedicated PSN store for their own country, so they choose another one. No VPN required. I'm in Spain and had secondary PSN accounts from Japan, USA and UK since the PS3 days and never had any issue.

I have no idea how it works in case of Steam. Maybe Steam doesn't show the games in the store if you have that country/language on your Steam user account or something like that and changing it you see them. Or somehting like that.

James Sawyer Ford said:
Most Sony first party games are on pc at this point, don’t think there’s much to worry about. Especially with how much ER sold on PC

They may launch first on console though
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Yes.

Or who knows, maybe they have been in acquisition talks for a while and plan to announce the ports with the acquisition or after it saying something like "Sony will help us reach more players in more platforms blabla".

But yes, having ported pretty much all their >2 years old PS5 stuff with GT7, Demon's Souls and (this one will be ported) Destruction AllStar as exceptions, and even refurbished PS3 and PS4 games, I think that sooner or later they'll port Bloodborne and Demon's Souls to PC, too because they are a great fit for PC and everyone remotely interested on acquiring them on PS already did it.

And / or maybe they have plans for sequels and / or movie/tv show/anime adaptations of both IPs and are waiting to release the PC port somewhere close to them as crosspromotion.

In fact, it would be cool to announce the acquisition at the same time that they announce their PC ports, sequels and movie/tv show/anime adaptations.
 
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Mibu no ookami

Mibu no ookami

Banned
yurinka said:
Add there maybe a 50% premium, and then some extra money on top for retention bonuses, restructuring and other acquisition and integration costs. I'd say a total cost of $5B including everything would be more than enough.
Click to expand...

Eh, I doubt you see much in the way of retention bonuses here if at all.
 
Iced Arcade

Iced Arcade

Member
Fitting and from will greatly benefit from it with a Sony budget behind them.

Way better than tencent or eraser group gobbling them up.
 
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