Elden Ring boosts Kadokawa’s gaming profits by over 1100%

Elden Ring, which launched at the start of this year in February, has been a resounding success to no one’s surprise.

The latest hit by FromSoftware, the developers behind the Dark Souls franchise and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, managed to top over 16.6 million sales by August, and likely has sold a lot since then. FromSoftware aren’t the only ones benefiting from the game’s massive success.

Their parent company, Kadokawa group, revealed in their Q2 2022 financials just how much the game’s success has generated income for their gaming division. The gothic ARPG raked in revenue to the tune of an operating profit increase of 1,116.8%.

That’s correct, they didn’t just improve 2 or 3 fold, which would be impressive on its own, but instead they’ve gone beyond that with an increase of over 10 times compared to last year. Their operating income this year managed 7.592 billion yen, which translates to about $51.785 million USD.

Last year they had only generated 623 million yen in operating profit. This is certainly good news for the company and for publisher Bandai Namco, who consider Elden Ring to be a franchise which they hope to continue to have new releases for “beyond games”.

Elden Ring’s success also put more into context about Sony and Tencent putting a combined 30% stake in FromSoftware. They are most certainly interested in the developers ability to create blockbuster hits and to have some claim to the insanely popular Elden Ring.

This increase in their gaming profits on the year also likely helped Kadokawa’s acquisition of Anime News Network earlier this month, probably.