Manga, book and videogame publisher Kadokawa Shoten has announced that it has purchased 80% of Dark Souls developer From Software’s stock directly from the previous owner, an IT solutions company called Trans-Cosmos. The deal, worth $1.75 billion yen (approx. $17 million USD), will place From Software in the long line of subsidiary companies that Kadokawa Shoten has acquired over the years. That list of subsidiaries includes Chara Ani, who were involved in Trails of Zero: Evolution, and Kadokawa Games.
Famitsu had the following takeaways from From Software Director and President Naotoshi Zin’s comments on the deal. We’ve translated them for you, in the likely event that you don’t speak Japanese.
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This will change our platform from simply being “hardware” to including networking and the cloud
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Responding to the needs of specific geographic areas [markets] will become increasingly important. We need to be increasingly locally oriented and increasingly globally oriented at the same time.
Kadokawa might be an unfamiliar name to many readers. In Japan they were responsible for developing (Kadokawa Games) and publishing the PS Vita dungeon crawler Demon Gaze - which has been recently released in the West by NIS America. Kadokawa Shoten is expected to give an official statement in English later today. Meanwhile, check back later for our in-depth (and slightly delayed) review of Dark Souls 2.
Shehzaan Abdulla
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