Rumor: Sony to acquire Kadokawa Corporation

[Mnementh]

the-pi-guy said:

method114 said:

I don't see why it's very unlikely. They literally have a whole gaming division but they are going to let Kadokawa continue to act independently instead of moving it in house to their own division? What would be the incentive to do that? Especially after the disaster that happened with them letting Bungie do exactly what you're suggesting.

The funny part is that Sony Music has published their own games on other platforms.

A lot of this will be dependent on what exactly Sony does with Kadokawa. If they keep them whole as a new company under Sony Group or Sony Music/Sony Pictures, then they'd likely publish elsewhere.

If they split up Kadokawa into different divisions, giving SIE the gaming parts, then they'd likely go exclusive. 

Well, they merged Funimation and Crunchyroll and I see some overlap between Kadokawa and Aniplex. But I can see the following happening: they split off Anime production and giving it Aniplex, while they keep print/manga with Kadokawa. Which would give them a nice simple structure: Kadokawa for print, Aniplex for animation and Crunchyroll for streaming.

What happens with games is up in the air, but as I understand it Kadokawa doesn't publish itself, but owns stakes in other studios. As they are organisationally distinct they could be moved over, even to SIE. And yes, SIE is the one interested in exclusivity, even though they did go much more multiplat recently. But, I am not sure how SIE will move now that Jim, Ryan is out. Did they give up on their live service push, or ease it and integrate it with other titles or still going forward? Yes, some games are cancelled, which still leaves quite some live service games.

The other thing is: Sony seems to have lost some trust in SIE. Their joint venture with PocketPair over Palworld was made with Sony Pictures and Aniplex. So I can seeing that Sony is not willing to give more studios to SIE for the time being, until they prove themself again. They have the structures to publish games outside of SIE, be it Sony Pictures or Aniplex. They might keep it there for the moment.