@Yurinka Told you they weren't going to wait.
The news is that they are (supposed to be) in talks. If talks succed and end agreeing the acquisition then pretty likely there would be a long period of paperworks and approvals from regulators.
And if things go well, the acquisition would be closed maybe in a year from now or even more. More or less when they expect to sell 80% of their banks stuff to spend that money mostly on entertainment acquisitions and investments.
So it would be in line with what Sony said a while ago: that basically regarding acquisitions they were going to have a low profile in the short term and would resume them in the mid-to-long term (which aligned more or less with 2026 and beyond or maybe late 2025 and beyond being optimistic).
Regarding the budget, it is for acquisitions+investments+buy back Sony stocks for the whole Sony during 3 years. That isn't enough to buy Kadokawa. But well, Sony can always review the budget to increase it if they consider it, to pay with Sony stocks, to take money from somewhere else (like the one from selling their banks stuff) or even to get debt if it would be the case. Even if doesn't fit there, if Sony and Kadokawa are interested, they'll acquire them because the budget is flexible and Sony can afford this.
Will From Software games be only on PlayStation? No? Then who gives a fuck?
Kadokawa is a pretty huge corporation with many different arms and subsidiaries who work in different business areas and gaming is only one of them.
I'd restructure and split Kadokawa's arms into different companies and would give them to the related Sony arms: Kadokawa Games for SIE, Kadokawa Music for Sony Music, Kadokawa Pictures (movies, tv shows, anime...) for Sony Pictures. And would create Sony Books to put there Kadokawa's books, magazines and mangas plus related stuff they may acquire in the future.
I'd also restructure Sony to send all their gaming companies to SIE, all their music stuff to Sony Music, all their movie/tv/animation/anime stuff to Sony Pictures. And would make all their games 100% PS console exclusive (with late PC ports for non-GaaS games).
But I assume all of this would be a giant pain in the ass for them, specially for squareminded Japanese people and would butthurt many executives. So I think they'll do something more simple: the Bungie/Bethesda/ABK approach.
I think that if Sony acquires them pretty likely they'll keep them pretty much as they were, doing what they did and using the publishing labels and brands they had to get as much money as they can from all platforms, and will just collect their profits and block any exclusivity deal with MS or Nintendo (and rival companies in case of anime). And regarding gaming they would continue having with them the relationship they had since PS1: they make some exclusive game from time to time (FromSoft and the other Kadokawa teams had dozens of exclusives for all PS consoles) and some multiplatform game from time to time.
