The official releaseThe “Media Article Notice” was posted to Kadokawa’s investor relations portal on November 20. The full text reads:
There are several articles about the acquisition of KADOKAWA Corporation (the “Company”) by Sony Group Inc. However, this information is not announced by the Company. The Company has received a preliminary letter of intent regarding the purchase of the Company’s shares, but no decision has been made yet. If there are any facts that should be announced in the future, we will inform you in a timely and appropriate manner.
A letter of intent is essentially the first step towards a merger or acquisition, during which the companies involved will negotiate the structure of the potential transaction before moving forward. While Kadokawa is not disclosing any additional information at this time, two sources in Reuters’ initial story indicated an agreement could be reached in the coming weeks.
As Polygon’s Oli Welsh pointed out when the news first broke, Sony’s attempted takeover of Kadokawa likely involves much more than just the company’s majority stake in FromSoftware and properties like Dark Souls, Armored coreAND Elden’s Ring. Kadokawa is also a key figure in manga publishing. Comedy-fantasy series Delicious in Dungeonfor example, it was distributed by Kadokawa’s Future Publishing division Enterbrain before the anime adaptation became a hit on Netflix earlier this year.
FromSoftware’s early history was to develop games exclusively for PlayStation consoles, before the company eventually became multi-platform. In 2015, the company collaborated with Sony’s now-defunct Japan Studio Transmitted through blooda game that for some remains the most popular game in FromSoftware’s portfolio.
