Sony Music Entertainment (SME) announced on August 28 that it has entered into a capital and business alliance agreement with game developer GungHo Online Entertainment. SME is set to acquire over 23% of GungHo shares for roughly 28.6 billion JPY ($179 million USD) on December 30, becoming GungHo’s largest shareholder. (source: Game Biz)
The shares that SME is set to acquire come from SON Financial LLC, which until now was GungHo’s largest shareholder.
SME is no stranger to the game industry. Most notably, it owns Aniplex, a Japanese entertainment company known for publishing games like Witch on the Holy Night, Melty Blood: Type Lumina, and Fate/Grand Order. It has also done business with GungHo in the past, licensing audio and video content rights for games and joint game development projects.
This new agreement between the two companies was established in hopes of expanding their partnership. In addition to joint development and operation of GungHo’s mobile, console, and PC games, they will also promote collaborative projects within GungHo Games. New game projects are also being considered, including those that use SME Group’s IPs. While no projects have been announced, the specifics of the partnership will be discussed and finalized in the future.
Following SME’s acquisition of the shares, the company will gain a large degree of influence over GungHo. However, as stated in the joint capital and business alliance agreement, both parties have confirmed that, as long as GungHo remains a publicly listed company, SME will respect the former’s operational independence as a listed entity.
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