Sony in talks to purchase Kadokawa, parent company of FromSoftware

I love From’s games and I think that they are one of the very best developers today but even their games becoming PS exclusives from now on won’t make me buy a PS5, the days when 1-2 games were system sellers for me are long gone.

In the next 3-4 years I will have access in two consoles/ecosystems (Xbox and Switch 2) if that is not enough and a developer/publisher won’t release their games on those two systems then I won’t give a F about their games too (are you listening Konami?), release your game on more platforms so I can buy it…it’s simple as that. :man_shrugging:

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FROM will never again experience the kind of sales they enjoyed with Elden Ring ever if Sony makes them exclusive.

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Death Stranding on Xbox starts with “Sony Interactive Entertainment Presents”

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I don’t think this acquisition happens and even if it does Sony will not make FromSoftware exclusive. Sony m may be making blunders left and right, but they see the tide just like when crossplay came around. It will shock many to see how quickly they adopt the multiplatform move. The new CFO is all about money and not interested in the limited exclusivity thing as we see them selling exclusivity rights back to partners like Kojima and the Predator guys. I think Sony will adopt the open platform idea nextgen as well.

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One can see the Xbox Game Studios logo with Ori on the Switch.

I think that bit is new, isn’t it? All of its assets.

https://x.com/80Level/status/1861667115738038632

I have a feeling it’s going to happen, and depending on what Sony does regarding exclusivity it could be good or not good at all. Not sure if it would be bad for anime, Crunchyroll hasn’t gotten worse or anything. But a actual monopoly on anime definitely wouldn’t be good, would it be one?

Kadokawa said yes, if you buy EVERYTHING. Sony doesn’t want large portions of what Kadokawa owns, so I’m not so sure right now.

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Interesting!

The thing is does Sony really have any plans on making anime better or successful. Crunchyroll seems to be going downhill and streaming sites like Netflix and Amazon seem to be doing much better here. Only thing Sony seems to be doing is charging exorbitant prices for nothing.

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Crunchyroll is going downhill? I don’t use it a whole lot lately but in what ways?

I haven’t had any problems with it, i think there was one show where they received a lot of flack for using AI translations or something but it’s been good otherwise.

That said, CR is one of those things where I don’t mind them being pretty dominant. Would rather get racked over the coals than sign up to Hi-Dive to see one show lol.

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Why do I get the impression Elden Ring and Dark Souls will go PlayStation exclusive… and somehow all the media will be fine with that?

They’ll only care if it negatively impacts PC

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I hope it doesn’t go through. I’ll be honest, I’d never even heard of ‘Kudokawa’ before this story broke. I knew FromSoftware has a history with Sony (exclusive Demon’s Souls back in 2009 and Bloodborne) but I had no idea about the ins and outs of who actually owns them. I don’t even care tbh I only hope no one interferes with From or takes their games away from Xbox.

I hope the fact this story broke without there being a deal in place means it’s going to fall through anyway. Usually we hear about acquisitions… after the acquisition is secured.

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The app tends to have more issues on Xbox now like freezing and crashing which it never did before. It also seems like there are less new animes coming like before not that I watch anyway but just something I noticed and then now it’s harder to know when a show is updated since that page has been removed or no longer featured the whole front just looks more like an ad poster for marketing. There are other issues that people have like it being more corporate and less community and of course price. It’s all over the internet anyway. In my opinion this is why Amazon services like HD Dive and Netflix are really booming.

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What’s going on with the IP? Bandai Namco published Elden Ring and the Dark Souls games, do they not own or have any protections from Sony coming and and taking over as publisher for Elden Ring 2 if this happened? Elden Ring 2 and the next Dark Souls game skipping Xbox would be massive.

Honestly I don’t see Sony putting any games from them on Xbox if the deal goes through. They would probably do ps and pc only. It would be crazy for Xbox not to negotiate something with Sony though since they have all these game studios and big ips that they plan to bring over to PlayStation.

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Oh, I see. Yeah those are annoying changes, don’t sound like those were necessary at all either. Those issues with Xbox app definitely sound bad yeah, personally I only use CR via the Google OS app on my TV, it’s been a long time that I used it on Xbox.

Hmm so a degraded performance on Xbox?

If only regulators who were so worried an Xbox “monopoly” would degrade CoD’s performance on PlayStation would keep the same energy over Sony’s monopoly of anime allowing them to degrade the performance on Xbox…

I don’t think its just an Xbox thing. Feels more like drastic budget cuts. Sony wants anime but have no interest in spending, This seems more like their MO remember Shenmue 3 they hardly put anything in to help that game’s development and then Stellar blade still looks a PS4 game and Callisto protocol they spent money to make the raytracing better only to have it lowered later on to avoid performance issues, so yes they are associated lately with a lot of degraded performance and situations.

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