Sony Wants To Produce More Animation Content, But Hampered By Animator Shortage, High Costs

Sony is redirecting billions into producing original content, including a significant focus on animated content. The move is being called a “creation shift” by the Japanese tech company, per a report in Financial Times.

The company believes that it is losing out financially by not being involved in the creation and development of IP. “Whether it’s for games, films or anime, we don’t have that much IP that we fostered from the beginning,” the company’s chief financial officer Hiroki Totoki told FT. “We’re lacking the early phase [of IP] and that’s an issue for us.”

Despite its roots as a consumer electronics company, around 60% of the company’s annual revenue is currently generated by games, films, and music. The company has invested over $10 billion in the last six years creating original content, and intends to invest further in that direction.

A central part of the company’s growth strategy moving forward will be animation content, particularly anime. Through its streaming service Crunchyroll, Sony currently releases around 200 titles a year, and wants to release even more.

The company also plans to leverage its Playstation Network service to grow Crunchyroll’s subscriber base, which is currently around 15 million. “About 30 per cent of PlayStation Network service customers watch anime, but only about 5 per cent have Crunchyroll accounts,” Totoki said.

Crunchyroll president Rahul Purini, however, said that producing anime has become more expensive in the last few years, with costs ballooning 40-60% due to growing budgets in Japan and a limited number of animators in the anime industry. The irony is that despite the fact that production costs are growing, Japanese animation workers regularly report that they are overworked, underpaid, and regularly face harassment in their jobs.

Sony is taking a multi-pronged approach to its anime growth strategy by looking to co-produce more shows, train more animators, and use technology to create more content.

“Given the constraints within the ecosystem, there is opportunity for various companies, including Sony, to see if there is a way to add additional capacity, bring additional talent and potentially leverage digital technology in the creation process,” Purini told FT.

Among the digital technologies the company is looking at to increase its animation output is artificial intelligence. The company’s chief executive Kenichiro Yoshida told FT, “It’s not going to be easy to balance . . . and it will be a continuous search for how we can use technology while protecting the rights of the creators.”

Sony revealed back in May that it is currently developing a new animation production software called AnimeCanvas through production studios A-1 Pictures and CloverWorks, which are part of its subsidiary Aniplex. It is not clear what the software actually does, but Sony said that the software was dedicated to “improving the production environment, efficiency, and enhancing the quality of output.”

The company is also considering launching an “academy” through Aniplex and Crunchyroll that would nurture anime creators in the global market, though it has not yet officially launched such a program.