Shares in Japan’s Kadokawa and Bandai Namco surged on Thursday following rave reviews for action role-playing game “Elden Ring”.
The multi-platform fantasy title is a collaboration between veteran game director Hidetaka Miyazaki and “Game of Thrones” author George RR Martin.
Shares in Kadokawa, whose subsidiary FromSoftware publishes the game in Japan, were 8% higher in afternoon trade while Bandai Namco, which publishes it overseas, climbed 6.5%.
Martin, who has kept fans waiting for the next volume of his hit series of novels, helped with world-building for the game.
It is currently the top reviewed PlayStation 5 title, according to review aggregator Metacritic, ahead of titles such as “Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker” and “Horizon Forbidden West”.
For Kadokawa, videogame success is offsetting softness in traditional publication. “Kadokawa experienced a temporary snapback in paper book sales,” Jefferies analyst Shinnosuke Takeuchi said.
Kadokawa is also banking on another upcoming videogame release, “Relayer,” an intergalactic mech-battler (a giant robot) that launches in the PlayStation Store on February 25.
• Reuters, with additional editing by George Russell
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