PlayStation owner Sony has today announced that it's made a significant investment in Dark Souls publisher Bandai Namco; pumping more than $460 million into the business. In return, the Japanese console maker now owns 2.5% of Bandai Namco shares, as the two companies form a "strategic business alliance".
While this agreement does look like Sony cosying up with its fellow Japanese game publisher, Xbox fans shouldn't be worried about a full acquisition - or indeed missing out on future Bandai Namco titles. The accompanying press release mentions that this partnership is largely to "focus on expanding the fan community for IP such as anime and manga around the world" - where the two companies anticipate "rapid market growth" in the coming years.
"Bandai Namco and Sony have historically collaborated on various projects in the fields such as games, anime and music, and they plan to extend this collaboration to a broader range of areas. The two companies intend to implement initiatives including the expansion of works as well as products and services based on IP developed by Bandai Namco, leveraging Sony's strengths in areas such as the production and distribution of anime and other video content, as well as merchandising."
If a lot of this language is sounding familiar, including the term 'strategic business alliance', well - another very similar deal was struck recently with FromSoftware. Sony made a similar agreement with the Elden Ring developer late last year, amongst rumours that the PlayStation owner was set to fully acquire the inventor of the 'souls' genre.
Anyway, neither of these investments are anything like a full acquisition, so we just wanted to reassure you folks that just like FromSoft, Bandai Namco isn't being purchased by Sony - and the team will continue to work with Xbox in future. You can probably just expect to see more Bandai IP going transmedia with the help of the PlayStation owner in future.