Sony Pictures Television recently announced its slate of mobile games for release in 2007, including Jeopardy! 2007 and God of War: Betrayal. In this Games On Deck interview, we talk to Eric Berger, VP of Mobile Entertainment, about Sony Pictures Television's upcoming titles and their place in the mobile space.
Games On Deck: First, can you tell us a little about yourself?
Eric Berger: Currently at Sony I run the mobile entertainment business in the United States. That's everything from our game business to our video business (video over carriers and the movies on memory cards.) I joined about a year ago, and we've got a renewed focus and dedication to the business, both on the gaming side and on the increasing video side. We've been making great progress on developing a series of new titles that we're just starting to bring to the market and some great new video products and video channels for the mobile video space.
GOD: It's interesting to see Sony Pictures Television specifically in the gaming space, albeit the mobile gaming space. Why?
EB: A decision was made recently to move the mobile content business into our Television group at Sony Pictures, largely because of the video side of the business. And so as we develop these largely digital video channels for the mobile space, we tap into not only assets but also the capabilities of our television group to do that.
What is interesting about the mobile space is that we have a history in gaming, and a lot of our carrier relationships and experience with mobile content comes out of the gaming side, and also our biggest titles in the game space, some of the biggest titles on the marketplace, are Sony Pictures Television IP, and that's Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy.
On some carrier decks right now Wheel of Fortune is one of the top two games in the United States, and Jeopardy is a top 20 title in the industry too. So we're very dedicated in growing these and other titles in the space and extending that into video.
Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy
GOD: Is it easier to create games based on Sony Pictures Television IP as you're part of the company?
EB: For all brands and franchises from within Sony Pictures, so within Colombia Tristar movie division as well as for the TV division we've got the first rights to develop the properties for the mobile space. And then what we decide is what we think will be a solid mobile brand or not. And we've learned a lot over the years. I think we and many of the Hollywood Studios where they would make a lot of mobile games based around movie titles, and they were highly dependent on the success of the movie, and they would mirror the box office, so when a movie dropped out of the top few slots, the mobile game would do the same.
What we've learned is to be much more choosy about developing franchises even from within our own company, to only develop titles that we think will have more longevity and really connect with the mobile gaming community.
So this year we're only releasing mobile games based around two movie franchises that we think meet the criteria. One is the James Bond franchise. We're releasing a Casino Royale game and we'll be releasing more James Bond games, and the other is Spider-Man. So we're releasing some Spider-Man games because we think the Spider-Man franchise and brand transcends the box-office and has real longevity.
We do exactly the same thing in the television space. So our biggest properties there are Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, as I said, and we're always looking to create extensions to those games to make them yet more interesting and interactive to consumers.
After that we also look to our sister companies. Sony Computer Entertainment in particular. We even look beyond. We're in the business of acquiring titles and licensing brands on a regular basis within our core business, and we view mobile in the same way.
Snoop Dogg Cruisin' is an example. It follows on the heels of a successful Snoop Dogg title we developed last year called Snoop Dogg Boxing. We try and balance the portfolio between all of these different aspects.
