sony held its annual corporate policy conference for fiscal year 2024 online on May 23. During the event, the chairman of the board of directors, Kenichiro Yoshidatogether with other managers, presented the company's future strategies.

In the field of entertainment, current initiatives to Maximize the value of intellectual property (IP)divided into three phases: “creation”, “formation” and “expansion”. With regard to anime, Aniplex, a company in the Sony group, highlighted its commitment to the production and distribution of high-quality works. In addition, they mentioned the development of their own animation software called “Anime Screen” as part of its efforts to improve production efficiency. This software, developed in collaboration with engineers from the Sony group, will initially be used in Aniplex production studios such as A-1 and CloverWorks Imagesand in the future it is planned to offer it to external studios.

Regarding international expansion, it was announced that the anime streaming service will target the English-speaking market. Crunchyroll has surpassed 13 million subscribers. Crunchyroll, which has been under Sony's management since its acquisition of Funimation in 2020, has seen remarkable growth since the 5 million subscribers in 2021powered by exclusives like the popular series “Kimetsu no Yaiba”.

Leveraging the group's ability to comprehensively handle the planning, production, distribution and reuse of anime content, Sony now plans to establish an academy to train anime creators overseas, in collaboration with Aniplex and Crunchyroll as the main entities, and in partnership with the industry. This initiative reflects Sony’s commitment to strengthening training in the sector and contributing to the development of international talent in anime creation.

Source: Yahoo! News Japan