Sony is reportedly in talks to acquire Elden Ring and Dark Souls parent company Kadokawa Corporation.
According to a report from Reuters, ongoing talks suggest that Sony is attempting to acquire Kadokawa, the Japanese conglomerate that owns Elden Ring, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne developer FromSoftware. While both companies declined to comment to Reuters, Kadokawa’s share price rose 23% after the report broke.
While Sony may have its eyes most firmly fixed on FromSoft, the acquisition would have further reaching goals. For one thing, Kadokawa is understood to have 26 games in development across its portfolio (20 console and six mobile). But the company is also a significant producer of anime and manga – its most recent high-profile release in those spheres was Delicious in Dungeon, which released on Netflix in the first half of this year, and is set to return for a second season.
Of course, this isn’t the first time that Sony and Kadokawa will have worked closely together. Bloodborne was, and remains, a PS4 exclusive – despite a ream of PS4-era remasters and re-releases, the game is yet to arrive on any new platforms, despite ongoing popularity and several community porting efforts. If Sony were to acquire Kadokawa, and FromSoft with it, I can’t imagine that the crowd baying for some kind of return to Yharnam would get any quieter. After all, even Dark Souls director and FromSoft icon Hidetaka Miyazaki knows “for a fact these guys want a Bloodborne PC port.”
Is this the start of an exciting new era for our list of the best FromSoftware games?