Elden Ring parent company buys studio behind some of the best JRPGs of recent years

Acquire, developer of Octopath Traveller, has been acquired

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FromSoftwareparent company Kadokawa has purchased the studio behind acclaimed JRPG series Octopath Traveller.

In a statement during its quarterly earnings report (viaVGC), Kadokawa, which also owns theElden Ringdeveloper, said that it had purchased the studio, Acquire Corp, “to strengthen the ability to create IP in games as part of our game business strategy.”

Kadokawa says that it hopes to “generate synergies” with existing game studios, which will strengthen development efforts and “enhance out lineup of console games.” That could mean that Acquire will assist the company’s other studios, as is common practice under companies like PlayStation, for instance, but it certainly also seems that Kadokawa has hopes for Acquire to continue creating its own games. It’s not clear whether that would mean more Octopath Traveller titles - those have been published bySquare Enix, but FromSoftware games are also regularly published externally - Elden Ring, for instance, was published byBandai Namco.

Most exciting, I think, is the suggestion of IP creation. Acquire could be set to create its own, entirely new games, but it might also assist with hopes forElden Ring to become a franchise “beyond the game itself”, which Bandai Namco CEO Yasuo Miyakawa suggested in 2022. Either way, it’s an exciting future for a company that’s quickly established itself at the forefront of a recent wave of ‘2.5D’ JRPGs - Octopath Traveller was a hit, and its sequel, which came out in 2023, was widely considered to have been the biggest snub during awards season after it failed to secure any nominations during The Game Awards.

Check out our list of thebest JRPGsof all time.

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I’m GamesRadar’s news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I’ve run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam’s latest indie hit.

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