As reported on Monday, April 28 by Siliconera , Japanese media publisher Kadokawa has officially acquired vidoegame developer From Software, the studio behind the recently released Dark Souls II .
According to Siliconera, the publisher’s purchase of From Software will be finalized next month on Wednesday, May 21, and it’ll acquire 80 percent of the developer’s stocks. Kadokawa plans for From Software to be a part of its group, along with Kadokawa Games, to work on the its core titles.
From Software CEO Naotoshi Zin shared a few words on the the benefits behind the studio’s acquisition. He summarized them into three key points, which are listed below.
- To further expand platforms. Everything from simple hardware to cloud network;
- The requirement to better correspond to regions (more global, more local);
- The coalescence between content.
According to a recent interview with Tanimura, the PC version of Dark Souls II won’t be used as a port to Xbox One or PlayStation 4 for the time being, as the studio is currently undecided on bringing Dark Souls II to next-gen consoles. Dark Souls modder Peter “Durante” Thoman was asked to analyze the PC port of Dark Souls II , to see if From Software did a better job with it than what it did with the PC version of Dark Souls . He concluded that the title, “ not only fulfills all the standard expectations in terms of resolution and framerate support, but also adds additional options beyond that. ”
Winners of a Dark Souls II shield design contest had their designs adapted and implemented into the game by From Software. What’s more, as well having their respective names credited in the game, the winners will also receive a copy of Dark Souls II: Collectors Edition and a physical shield forged by real blacksmiths created in winners’ respective designs. Check out our Travis Huber’s review of Dark Souls II on Xbox 360.
[ Siliconera ]