Everyone is talking about the gaming angle, and yes, Sony buying FromSoft would be big in the game space. But Sony owning all of Kadokawa productions, with Crunchyroll as their distribution engine...
Everyone is talking about the gaming angle, and yes, Sony buying FromSoft would be big in the game space. But Sony owning all of Kadokawa productions, with Crunchyroll as their distribution engine gives them a massive, MASSIVE share of the international anime distribution market.
To expand on the scope of this, because I was also surprised that more people weren't talking about the breadth of what would happen if this deal went through: Kadokawa has revenues of more than...
To expand on the scope of this, because I was also surprised that more people weren't talking about the breadth of what would happen if this deal went through:
Kadokawa has revenues of more than half that of Sega Sammy (the whole thing, not just the video game portion) and a similar fraction of its total asset value. So it's kinda like if Sony bought a good chunk of Sega Sammy. Kadokawa has about half the claimed asset value as Nippon TV (national TV stations, Studio Ghibli, etc) and 6x that of Sanrio (Hello Kitty, among other things). Kadokawa has approximately the same total assets (IPs and things) as Bandai Namco Holdings (the whole thing) but about a third of Bamco's operating income. Kadokawa is a very large conglomerate and already have substantial investment from Tencent and an agreement to help distribute content via Tencent's properties in China.
Sony already owns Funimation and Crunchyroll, so this is tying together IP with streaming services with more streaming markets and more IP. It's really huge.
On the gaming front, I don't think a lot of that will resonate much with many people outside of the obvious, which is why FromSoft is front and center in the headlines. A lot of people haven't heard of Kadokawa properties outside of stuff they own via subsidiaries like Spike Chunsoft or Enterbrain (which I believe still owns RPG Maker). I'm not sure how the IPs under Acquire work, because they were just acquired by Kadokawa earlier in 2024. And for instance Octopath Traveler was jointly developed and published by SE. I would bet that IP has contract negotiation issues if the Sony buyout is successful.
I’m honestly really disappointed to hear that Acquire was bought by Kadokawa. Acquire has a pedegree of great games that have a long direct lineage of design. As good as October Traveller has...
I’m honestly really disappointed to hear that Acquire was bought by Kadokawa. Acquire has a pedegree of great games that have a long direct lineage of design. As good as October Traveller has been, I am much more worried about what will happen to the people and structures they have built up that allowed them to create it alongside their other projects of the past. I don’t know what restrictions Kadokawa has placed on them, but I have no doubt in my mind that Sony will put a lot more of them and possibly completely restructure them.
I’m also worried because Spike Chunsoft has been a boon for English speakers because they translate and publish a number of Japanese adventure games, most notably the Danganronpa series. Personally, seeing Spike Chunsoft on a trailer was like a sign of quality. Even their bad games were pretty good. They also have a very long pedegree of great, industry-changing games historically; not only did they repopularize roguelike games with their Mystery Dungeon metaseries, they are also the studio that developed the first few Dragon Quest games.
Sony is not averse to being an arms dealer in the streaming wars when it comes to film and tv rights, and while Crunchyroll’s library is unmatched when it comes to volume, Sony has a history of...
Sony is not averse to being an arms dealer in the streaming wars when it comes to film and tv rights, and while Crunchyroll’s library is unmatched when it comes to volume, Sony has a history of licensing out high performers after their run while keeping simulcast exclusivity. I see them staying the course in that for now, since cozying up to Netflix or Tubi or Starz is so much more lucrative for them than to try and start Crackle again, fail, and license all their stuff anyway.
There was already a whole antitrust investigation from the US Department of Justice when they were acquiring Crunchyroll about how they might have enough of a monopoly on international anime...
There was already a whole antitrust investigation from the US Department of Justice when they were acquiring Crunchyroll about how they might have enough of a monopoly on international anime distribution that they would be able to control the industry. From what I saw, a lot of people seemed to think that investigation was silly and pointless, but maybe the there was a lot more merit to it than originally thought.
There’s something to be said about controlling the worldwide distribution rights for anime. It’s a small chunk, financially, but I would say that it might pitch well above its right in a cultural...
There’s something to be said about controlling the worldwide distribution rights for anime. It’s a small chunk, financially, but I would say that it might pitch well above its right in a cultural sense. I need to dig into this to see if there’s any research to back up this feeling, or if it’s simply my view from being enmeshed in it for so long.
Oh hey the comment I wrote up for /r/anime comes in handy here too. I think the keyword here is vertical integration for Sony. Kadokawa owns several anime studios (ENGI, Dogo Kobo, and part of...
Oh hey the comment I wrote up for /r/anime comes in handy here too.
I think the keyword here is vertical integration for Sony. Kadokawa owns several anime studios (ENGI, Dogo Kobo, and part of Kinema Citrus) and was involved in the production of a lot of anime, often just as an investor, but it cannot be stressed enough just how much of the printed media market — especially light novels — is controlled by them.
In their 2023 fiscal year Kadokawa's publishing business had sales of 139,990 million yen (≈1.03 billion USD). There's still major competition with Shueisha (209,684 million yen FY2023) and Kodansha (172,002 million yen FY2023) ahead of them in the publishing market but this would be a way for Sony to jump in without trying to build from a smaller foothold.
All that said, I'd guess the main benefit for Sony would be gaining full control of the IP that Kadokawa has rather than the publishing market itself. The pipeline from web novel -> light novel -> anime has been something Kadokawa's been pushing for the past several years, even if it's likely contributed to the ongoing crisis in anime production. That's one of the main factors behind why there are so many isekai anime these days and Sony could take full control of that to give them more options in anime without needing to make an external deal.
In the end Sony could have their hands on every part from the initial light novel release in Japanese (Dengeki Bunko) and English (J-Novel Club) through the anime production (Doga Kobo), streaming (Crunchyroll), and Blu-ray (Aniplex) of its adaptation along with any articles about it (Newtype & Anime News Network). They might have already consolidated the anime distribution side but this would give them a big chunk of the manga/light novel industry with a massive number of IPs.
I think Kadokawa also owns the old Daiei Pictures catalogue, which I suppose means that this purchase could get Sony two Akira Kurosawa films, namely his classic Rashomon and the less well known...
I think Kadokawa also owns the old Daiei Pictures catalogue, which I suppose means that this purchase could get Sony two Akira Kurosawa films, namely his classic Rashomon and the less well known (but I think quite excellent) The Quiet Duel, as well as many late-career works of Kenji Mizoguchi such as Ugetsu and Sansho the Bailiff, and also the Zatoichi series.
That's quite a big thing, if you are into golden age Japanese cinema.
Well, to be honest, I just assume this to be true based on the fact that Daiei produced those films and when the company went bankrupt in the early 70s, Kadokawa bought them. I could be wrong of...
Well, to be honest, I just assume this to be true based on the fact that Daiei produced those films and when the company went bankrupt in the early 70s, Kadokawa bought them. I could be wrong of course.
Everyone is talking about the gaming angle, and yes, Sony buying FromSoft would be big in the game space. But Sony owning all of Kadokawa productions, with Crunchyroll as their distribution engine gives them a massive, MASSIVE share of the international anime distribution market.
To expand on the scope of this, because I was also surprised that more people weren't talking about the breadth of what would happen if this deal went through:
Kadokawa has revenues of more than half that of Sega Sammy (the whole thing, not just the video game portion) and a similar fraction of its total asset value. So it's kinda like if Sony bought a good chunk of Sega Sammy. Kadokawa has about half the claimed asset value as Nippon TV (national TV stations, Studio Ghibli, etc) and 6x that of Sanrio (Hello Kitty, among other things). Kadokawa has approximately the same total assets (IPs and things) as Bandai Namco Holdings (the whole thing) but about a third of Bamco's operating income. Kadokawa is a very large conglomerate and already have substantial investment from Tencent and an agreement to help distribute content via Tencent's properties in China.
Sony already owns Funimation and Crunchyroll, so this is tying together IP with streaming services with more streaming markets and more IP. It's really huge.
On the gaming front, I don't think a lot of that will resonate much with many people outside of the obvious, which is why FromSoft is front and center in the headlines. A lot of people haven't heard of Kadokawa properties outside of stuff they own via subsidiaries like Spike Chunsoft or Enterbrain (which I believe still owns RPG Maker). I'm not sure how the IPs under Acquire work, because they were just acquired by Kadokawa earlier in 2024. And for instance Octopath Traveler was jointly developed and published by SE. I would bet that IP has contract negotiation issues if the Sony buyout is successful.
I’m honestly really disappointed to hear that Acquire was bought by Kadokawa. Acquire has a pedegree of great games that have a long direct lineage of design. As good as October Traveller has been, I am much more worried about what will happen to the people and structures they have built up that allowed them to create it alongside their other projects of the past. I don’t know what restrictions Kadokawa has placed on them, but I have no doubt in my mind that Sony will put a lot more of them and possibly completely restructure them.
I’m also worried because Spike Chunsoft has been a boon for English speakers because they translate and publish a number of Japanese adventure games, most notably the Danganronpa series. Personally, seeing Spike Chunsoft on a trailer was like a sign of quality. Even their bad games were pretty good. They also have a very long pedegree of great, industry-changing games historically; not only did they repopularize roguelike games with their Mystery Dungeon metaseries, they are also the studio that developed the first few Dragon Quest games.
I have to wonder how this would affect distribution deals with services like Netflix and Amazon Prime.
Sony is not averse to being an arms dealer in the streaming wars when it comes to film and tv rights, and while Crunchyroll’s library is unmatched when it comes to volume, Sony has a history of licensing out high performers after their run while keeping simulcast exclusivity. I see them staying the course in that for now, since cozying up to Netflix or Tubi or Starz is so much more lucrative for them than to try and start Crackle again, fail, and license all their stuff anyway.
There was already a whole antitrust investigation from the US Department of Justice when they were acquiring Crunchyroll about how they might have enough of a monopoly on international anime distribution that they would be able to control the industry. From what I saw, a lot of people seemed to think that investigation was silly and pointless, but maybe the there was a lot more merit to it than originally thought.
There’s something to be said about controlling the worldwide distribution rights for anime. It’s a small chunk, financially, but I would say that it might pitch well above its right in a cultural sense. I need to dig into this to see if there’s any research to back up this feeling, or if it’s simply my view from being enmeshed in it for so long.
Oh hey the comment I wrote up for /r/anime comes in handy here too.
I think the keyword here is vertical integration for Sony. Kadokawa owns several anime studios (ENGI, Dogo Kobo, and part of Kinema Citrus) and was involved in the production of a lot of anime, often just as an investor, but it cannot be stressed enough just how much of the printed media market — especially light novels — is controlled by them.
In their 2023 fiscal year Kadokawa's publishing business had sales of 139,990 million yen (≈1.03 billion USD). There's still major competition with Shueisha (209,684 million yen FY2023) and Kodansha (172,002 million yen FY2023) ahead of them in the publishing market but this would be a way for Sony to jump in without trying to build from a smaller foothold.
All that said, I'd guess the main benefit for Sony would be gaining full control of the IP that Kadokawa has rather than the publishing market itself. The pipeline from web novel -> light novel -> anime has been something Kadokawa's been pushing for the past several years, even if it's likely contributed to the ongoing crisis in anime production. That's one of the main factors behind why there are so many isekai anime these days and Sony could take full control of that to give them more options in anime without needing to make an external deal.
Outside of manga/novel publishing Kadokawa owns other platforms like Niconico for streaming, Book Walker for e-books, and Newtype magazine which covers the industry. For overseas investments they also have Anime News Network, J-Novel Club, and half of Yen Press.
In the end Sony could have their hands on every part from the initial light novel release in Japanese (Dengeki Bunko) and English (J-Novel Club) through the anime production (Doga Kobo), streaming (Crunchyroll), and Blu-ray (Aniplex) of its adaptation along with any articles about it (Newtype & Anime News Network). They might have already consolidated the anime distribution side but this would give them a big chunk of the manga/light novel industry with a massive number of IPs.
Two more write-ups on the anime industry side: Animenomics and Animehunch.
And a short list of some of the many different magazines/novel imprints Kadokawa owns:
Under ASCII Media Works there's Dengeki Bunko which has published literally thousands of light novels as well as Dengeki Daioh, Dengeki G's Comic and Dengeki Comics for manga.
Under Enterbrain there's Famitsu Bunko for LNs and Comic Beam and Harta for manga.
Under Fujimi Shobo there's Fantasia Bunko for LNs and Monthly Dragon Age for manga.
Under Kadokawa Shoten there's Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko for LNs and Monthly Shounen Ace, Young Ace, Asuka, and Gundam Ace for manga.
Under Media Factory (which is also more directly involved with anime) there's MF Bunko J for LNs and Monthly Comic Alive, Monthly Comic Flapper, Monthly Comic Gene, and Comic Cune for manga.
I think Kadokawa also owns the old Daiei Pictures catalogue, which I suppose means that this purchase could get Sony two Akira Kurosawa films, namely his classic Rashomon and the less well known (but I think quite excellent) The Quiet Duel, as well as many late-career works of Kenji Mizoguchi such as Ugetsu and Sansho the Bailiff, and also the Zatoichi series.
That's quite a big thing, if you are into golden age Japanese cinema.
I didn't know that Kadokawa Daiei Studio owns Rashomon and Zatoichi now! Thanks for pointing that out.
Well, to be honest, I just assume this to be true based on the fact that Daiei produced those films and when the company went bankrupt in the early 70s, Kadokawa bought them. I could be wrong of course.
I think you're right. The Kadokawa Daiei Studio wiki page lists Rashomon as a property they own (or have rights to decide who distributes it anyway).
Mirror: https://archive.is/0dKlB