Multimedia publisher Kadokawa Corporation and NicoNico Douga video portal provider Dwango recently announced that the two companies will be merging operations, going into effect on October 1, 2014. Famitsu fills us in on some details behind the announcement.
After talking about the history behind the respective companies, Kadokawa advisor Tatsuo Sato, who will be the president of the merged companies, talked about Dwango’s expertise in technology and Kadokawa’s content, and how they will provide a new business model in the era of the Internet.
Once the merger takes place, the company will be known as Kadokawa Dwango Corp.
Their goal of the merger is to become an “unprecedented content publisher the world has yet to see,” as an “evolved mega-content publisher”. This will be possible thanks to the merger of the two giants, according to Sato.
“I believe that this will also be a big merit for Dwango,” shared Dwango chairman Nobuo Kawakami at the press event. “From this point on, I believe that all content will either be on the net or digitalized. For example, Kadokawa has an E-book service called Bookwalker.”
“I believe that from this point on, [companies] with content will be seeing a decline in their profits, unless they have a platform [for digital distribution],” continued Kawakami, as he expressed his thoughts about how we’ll likely be seeing a big difference in the near future between companies that develop their own digital distribution platforms and those who rely on others [to do the distribution].
[Photographs courtesy Famitsu.]
