Sony’s Rumored Plan to Buy FromSoftware’s Parent Company is the Doom of All Gaming

The gaming world right now is in turmoil. There’s no sense of any creativity, just surfacing the same old products with new labels, just like Sony. This huge company has been doing this for a long time, the recent example being bringing unnecessary Director’s Cut versions of the already existing games.

With the amount of games Sony has in its library, the company can still survive at least this decade by rebranding old titles without creating something unique, something fresh. This is pretty concerning, keeping in mind the fate of the gaming fraternity. However, there is a recent report that suggests even graver concerns are waiting for us, which might lead to an unhealthy monopoly.

Sony Is Reportedly in Talks to Acquire Kadokawa

According to reports, Sony is in negotiations to buy Kadokawa, a significant force in the Japanese entertainment sector, which is well-known for its influence in the manga and anime industries and for developing highly popular games like Elden Ring as FromSoftware is a subsidiary company of it. “Talks between the two sides are ongoing,” and if they are successful, “a deal could be signed in the coming weeks,” according to Reuters.

Kadokawa is a multi-sector company with publishing, gaming, and film subsidiaries. Spike Chunsoft, Acquire, and FromSoftware are among its game developers. In addition, Kadokawa owns shares in Kinema Citrus, ENGI, and Doga Kobo, an anime studio.

Along with publishing manga, light novels, and magazines, it also runs J-Novel Club, which translates Japanese light novels into English, and BookWalker, an e-book platform for manga and light novels.

Not only that, Kadokawa owns a sizable portion of Yen Press, a well-known English publisher of webtoons, light novels, and manga. Among the company’s intellectual properties are well-known games like Oshi no Ko and Delicious in Dungeon.

Given that Sony already owns the anime streaming services Funimation and Crunchyroll, Kadokawa’s extensive collection of manga and anime would be a useful addition.

This Might Be a Huge Setback for the Gaming and Anime World

Along with Chinese tech giant Tencent (16%), Sony already owns a minority stake (2%) in Kadokawa and FromSoftware (14%). If the deal goes through, Sony would acquire a majority stake in Kadokawa’s assets, strengthening its portfolio of intellectual property (IP), games, and anime.

Now if the deal is sealed, Sony will come up with an abrupt monopoly in the industry. In an Instagram post regarding the news, fans are pretty concerned about what is next:

This fan stated the raw truth about what’s coming next.

Horrid news. Get ready for sanitization, censorship, forced remakes, mandatory PSN accounts, and a f*ckton of paid cosmetics and other monetization practices. I can even imagine what they will do the anime/merchandise Kadokawa publishes.

This fan fears that we will never get a FromSoftware title for Windows ever again.

Noooo then we won’t get games for windows anymore

This fan knows the future as well.

nothing good will come from this

On the other hand, this fan reminds us of another historical acquisition that never fulfilled our expectations.

This makes me nervous. It reminds me of what Activision did to Blizzard…

Hard time awaits for all of us.

If it happens, it would be one of the worst things to happen to gaming this decade. Imagine Elden Ring 2 but it’s only on PS for a year or 2.

This possible action fits in with Sony’s larger plan to grow its entertainment business. Last year, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida underlined the long-term value of intellectual property, especially in anime, which has experienced phenomenal growth on a global scale due to streaming services and the growing appeal of Japanese culture.