Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida and his team are laying out a “creation shift” to facilitate a multibillion-dollar push that will increase the studio’s level of content and animation production.

The plan is to create more original IPs and realign focus from the distribution side of the business to improve Sony’s ROI, as per an interview that ran last week in the Financial Times. “Whether it’s for games, films or anime, we don’t have that much IP that we have fostered from the beginning,” CFO Hiroki Totoki said. “We’re lacking the early phase [of development], and that’s an issue for us.” 

Sony’s entertainment spending has already been trending up over the past few years. Since Yoshida took over running the company in April 2018, it has spent US$10 billion on movies, games and music—all of which account for roughly 60% of its annual revenue.

Released last month, Sony’s most recent financial report for Q1 showed year-over-year increases in revenue (up by 2%) and operating profit (up by 10%). These lifts were driven by the company’s gaming and pictures segments—the latter of which includes theatrical output such as The Garfield Movie (which grossed US$257 million against a US$60-million budget) and anime streamer Crunchyroll (which hit 15 million paid subscribers) that includes licensed heavy-hitters like Dragon Ball Z (pictured), Digimon and One Piece in its catalogue.

Crunchyroll releases nearly 200 titles a year, so it’s naturally expected to play a big role in Sony’s ramped-up content plans. But that’s not to say the anime industry isn’t dealing with its own issues—Crunchyroll president Rahul Purini has estimated that anime production costs have increased by 40% to 60% in the past few years, for example.

To navigate this challenge, Purini told FT that Crunchyroll and Sony are looking to co-produce projects together and find other ways of improving the bottom line, such as training animators and streamlining production with new and efficient digital tools. These moves should also help keep up with rising demand from the genre’s fast-growing audience. “Some of our research shows that there are more than 800 million anime fans globally, and there [will] be a billion in the next few years,” Purini added. 

Sony is also keen to leverage lessons learned from its PlayStation Network service to improve Crunchyroll engagement, with joint promotions being considered. “About 30% of PlayStation Network customers watch anime, but only about 5% have Crunchyroll accounts,” Totoki noted.