![]() ![]() It’s not as big as everyone originally predicted, but people are making money in the space. It seems like a lot of people may not realize that this has turned into a business. Tommy Palm’s company, Resolution Games, has about 200 people working on these games now. There aren’t as many fish in the ocean feeding with them anymore. They’ve persevered in the space long enough to see the quality of their games being rewarded. Schell Games has said that all of their games have crossed a million sold. GamesBeat: It seems like there are some folks, some hitmakers, that have thrived in what’s a smaller space than everybody expected, but still a good niche in games. It’s still relatively small in the grand scheme of things, but we see this as an area with tremendous upside as the market grows. As the business is growing, we’re starting to see real return on it. We have a variety of partnerships with some of the key platforms out there. Zim: In terms of the business? The good news is, the focus has always been on how to turn this into a business. GamesBeat: Has Sony ever described how that’s worked out financially over time? Early on it was a mix of location-based, a little promotion, and then building a business with real transactional studio-based games. More recently we did Zombieland: Headshot Fever that we released on Quest, developed with a company called XR Games. We did a Groundhog Day game, a sequel to the movie, with TequilaWorks. Then we moved more into better development. These were around 2016, 2017, the tip of the iceberg. We did a project early on with D-BOX, the motion chair company. It’s a free Spider-Man game to promote the live-action movies. We did a promotional Spider-Man game that actually did really well. On the in-home side we did a few games early that were marketing initiatives. We did a project with Dreamscape, another location-based VR company, with a Men in Black game. Location-based walk-around VR that you did with a backpack on. We did a couple of projects with The Void, which you probably remember. Zim: Early on there were two real categories. GamesBeat: What were some of the titles along the way that built up to where you are now? We’d work with PlayStation, work with Meta, work with any partner out there to distribute content and help build this business. The mission was to take our franchise IPs, expand those worlds into this new platform, give audiences a chance to engage with their favorite IPs like Ghostbusters, do new things, and monetize them. ![]() I started Sony Pictures VR, which is a label. How could we expand the worlds of movies, TV, and even games onto this new platform, following the technology breakthroughs that were expected to come with headsets? Leaning into immersion, presence, agency, all the unique features VR promised, although the tech at the time was still–to this day it’s still nascent in terms of achieving the ultimate goals. I pitched the idea of building a little content business inside the movie studio that would focus on–at that point it was really a new frontier of storytelling. Of course as it turns out the sister division at PlayStation was working at PSVR at the time. As someone who, at the studio, had been trying to push new technologies to do exciting things, I figured this would be an opportunity to not just start a new way of marketing movies, but also build a new business. I started in digital marketing, that intersection of new technologies and ways to market movies and get people excited about film products.Ībout eight years ago somebody put a VR headset on me and it was a horrible experience. Before that I was at Fox and Lionsgate movie studios. Jake Zim: I’m the senior vice president of virtual reality at Sony Pictures. GamesBeat: Can you tell me about your background? How long have you been doing this? Jake Zim is senior vice president for VR at Sony Pictures. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |