These days, when Sony and Tencent are in the gaming headlines, it’s often because they’ve acquired another studio. That’s actually not the case this time, but the two gaming giants have made big investments in Kadokawa Corporation, the parent company of Elden Ring developer FromSoftware.
According to a new notice from Kadokawa, Sony and Tencent subsidiary Sixjoy now own a 14% and a 16% stake in the company, respectively. That still leaves the 70% majority of shares in Kadokawa’s hands, so neither Sony nor Tencent has much control, but they do now have seats at the table. Considering Elden Ring became one of America’s best-selling games of all time after just four months on the market, it’s understandable that Sony and Tencent want a piece of the pie.
As stated in the notice from Kadokawa, these new investments from Sony and Tencent mean the company can “aim to proactively invest in development of more powerful game IP for itself to strengthen FromSoftware’s development capabilities.” It’s no surprise that the studio plans to make more games, and seed money from two other companies certainly helps with that. A new Armored Core game is the likeliest of these “more powerful game IP[s]” that we’ll be seeing soon. A FromSoftware survey hinted at the game’s existence at the beginning of 2022, and Armored Core 6 screenshots leaked just a few days later.
This isn’t the first time Sony and FromSoftware have been associated with each other either. Their working relationship began with PlayStation 3 exclusive Demon’s Souls in 2009, and Sony later acquired 2020 remake developer Bluepoint Games. In between those releases was Bloodborne; the 2015 game was also PlayStation 4 exclusive developed by FromSoftware. Bloodborne fans have been waiting for any news about a PC port for a long time now, but at least they have the Bloodborne PSX Demake in the meantime.
