Q&A: Sony Pictures' Yair Landau

As vice chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment and president of Sony Pictures Digital, there's not much at Sony that doesn't come under the aegis of Yair Landau. He leads the decision-making team at Sony Pictures Animation, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Sony Pictures Digital Networks, and, yes, Sony Online Entertainment. Last night, Landau delivered the IEMA keynote address in Las Vegas, Nevada, and now we talk further with Landau about where Sony is taking today's entertainment consumer.

GameSpot: Granted, games have always played a role in the Sony Pictures agenda, but recently, the games beat has been capturing more and more mindshare among consumers, advertisers, and entertainment creators. Take us backstage at Sony: How important--relative to movies, TV, and music--are games in the entertainment mix that Sony controls?

Yair Landau: Games play an important and growing role in the entertainment mix in the industry overall and at Sony Pictures in particular. We grow the market by developing games for multiple platforms. Sony Online Entertainment is a leader in massively multiplayer online games. We've seen their customer base grow with the continuing success of EverQuest and the introduction of Star Wars Galaxies. The release this year of EverQuest II suggests further expansion of that market. At Sony Pictures Digital Networks, we see growth in mobile entertainment through our Sony Pictures Mobile business. Its Spider-Man games, in the market now, are really well done. Sony Pictures Mobile develops and publishes games based on our branded properties, such as Wheel of Fortune, and original products, such as a boxing game with Snoop Dogg. We have a thriving casual-games business built largely on movie, television, and game show titles. For the console platform, we have a nimble unit at our award-winning Imageworks visual effects and animation company. They were instrumental in the development of Full Spectrum Warrior. We recently signed a deal with visual designer Doug Chiang to develop a game based on his Robota property. And finally, games are an important part of our licensing and merchandising efforts. Film and television properties are often licensed to third-party companies, such as Activision, which has done a spectacular job with their Spider-Man 2 game.

GS: With PS2, Sony's reach into US households is already significant. Can you give us a clue as to how Sony plans to leverage and grow its reach into entertainment-savvy households?

YL: I’m at Sony Pictures, so I can’t really talk about SCEA’s specific plans, but Sony as a whole is committed to convergence of entertainment through multiple platforms and will continue building out networked entertainment services for all forms of content to be enjoyed on future consoles (PS3 and beyond), PCs, mobile phones, and the PSP. Ultimately all of the major IP-connected platforms will be vehicles for online entertainment.

GS: On the technology front, let’s just say that the game industry has, in the past 10 years, made greater strides in evolving its development tools than movies have. Is this a surprise to you, or did you see it coming?

YL: While I'm not sure I agree with your statement, it is true that the game industry has made great strides in development tools and that a lot of filmmaking is still analog, but if you compare 3D visual effects and character animation today to 10 years ago, you see tremendous change. Where the game industry truly leads the movie business is in the evolution of consumer devices. The graphics processing that consumers control has increased remarkably and will continue to outpace not just movies but many other industries as well. It used to be that the most powerful technology was being developed for the defense and aerospace industries. Now, you find the most powerful processing power in games.

GS: What great developments from your game divisions are being tapped by the music, TV, and film groups at Sony?

YL: The best example is Imagemotion, a proprietary performance capture system that we developed at Sony Pictures Imageworks and are currently using on The Polar Express, with Bob Zemeckis and Warner Bros., and will be using next on Columbia's Monster House. The technology significantly advances what we have seen in motion capture to date by increasing the reference points and allowing a director with an appreciation--but not the training for animation--to work effectively in an all-CG environment. It also allows the actor, in the case of The Polar Express, Tom Hanks, to play multiple characters himself. We're also using Nvidia graphics cards, for instance, in our visual effects pipeline. While not developed by our game units, we share their use. Another example in our production pipeline is the use of NXN's asset management system. Both Imageworks and Sony Online Entertainment employ this.

GS: You recently said, "The days of entertainment segmentation are truly behind us. Integration of music, movies, games, and television continues to evolve as rule." I premise that this characterization is still only a sought-after concept and is not yet realized. How is Sony accelerating this evolution?

YL: I would agree with you that convergence is happening but that it's not yet happened on a mass scale. It is not so much a sought-after concept as an evolving fact in consumers' lives. Sony accelerates it in its content on a daily basis. Spider-Man 2 is an amazing and huge motion picture, but it is also a major soundtrack and an awesome game. For a significant number of people, all three forms of entertainment occur through a PlayStation 2 today. So from both a content and hardware standpoint, I think Sony is accelerating convergence in everyday life.

GS: Where does the retailer fit into the equation?

YL: The retailer represents the first and primary contact point with the customer. It all starts in the retail environment and will continue to, in my opinion. The evolution of retailing into the new entertainment center is underplayed. The growth of games and DVDs and technology has turned the retailer into an entertainment destination. Go in to a retail store on any given weekend, and [note that] entertainment has brought the customers in. The smart retailers are really capitalizing on this.

GS: By distributing products directly to consumers--seamlessly from studio to set-top box--Sony has the tools to bypass the current retail channel. Is the temptation there to implement such a business model?

YL: In 1999, everyone was predicting the end of bricks-and-mortar [retail stores]. What we've learned and believe is that our very best customers buy through multiple channels, not just one. The most important aspect is that we are growing the overall entertainment market. We have implemented a balance [among] Sony Online [products] between digital downloads and retail sales, which I think will be a model.

GS: What are the three most important elements of games that you see influencing the non-core gamer to bring him or her into the fold?

YL: It all comes down to making games fun [and] the continuing evolution of graphics so that people lose themselves in the games. And, overall, it is about a maturing demographic. Today, the demarcation line is at about 40. Older people don't play [games] as much. Today's 20-year-olds all play and have always played. But our big, open issue as an industry is attracting more women.