The developer of Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Sekiro has become one of the Japanese studios with the greatest projection and success in the last decade.
Sony and Tencent have jointly acquired 30% of FromSoftware, the Japanese studio known especially for Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, the Armored Core saga and its latest hit, Elden Ring. Specifically Sixjoy from Tencent becomes the second largest shareholder of the studio with 16.3% while Sony Interactive Entertainment now owns 14.1%; Kadokawa Entertainment continues to be the developer’s largest shareholder.
Sony has drastically increased the number of acquisitions in recent years, from the purchase of Insomniac Games in 2019 to Savage Game Studios, announced this week; At this time they also added studios with which they had worked on multiple projects, such as Housemarque, Firesprite -plus Fabrik Games-, Bluepoint Games, or teams such as Haven Studios, Valkyrie Entertainment, Nixxes or Bungie, creators of Halo and Destiny. Participation in FromSoftware, however, does not lead to an acquisition and according to the document, these resources will be used to strengthen the expansion of FromSoftware in various media, including games, anime and cinema.
Tencent is the Chinese tech giant that has spread its investments or purchases by numerous companies: Epic Games, Riot Games, Funcom, Splash Damage, Bloober Team, Sumo Group, PlatinumGames and many more make Tencent the second largest company in the industry.