The London-headquartered Sony Computer Entertainment Europe is moving away from Greek mythology-based content and is betting big on the Indian market with culture-specific gaming software. The company, which is responsible for distribution, marketing and sales of leading gaming consoles like PlayStation3, PlayStation2 and PlayStation Portable (PSP) across Europe, West Asia, Africa and Oceania, believes there is no lack of local content in India. In an interview with K Rajani Kanth, Sony Computer Chief Operating Officer Jim Ryan shares the company’s strategies — including for price cuts and collaborations with local game developers — and its growth trajectory. Edited excerpts:
Where does India stand in terms of Sony’s console installations?
North America, Japan and Europe are the biggest markets for us, while India is growing steadily over the years. On the back of our culture-specific focus and local collaborations, we expect 2010 to be the year of growth for us in India. So far, we have made half-a-million PlayStation2, 180,000 PSP and 50,000 PlayStation3 installations. We expect to see about 90 per cent growth here this year.
The potential is immense in the domestic market, which — according to Nasscom estimates — is around Rs 500 crore for both software and hardware. Abundant skill sets are available here and the richness of stories that make good games is a global opportunity for us. Even as we expand our collaborations with more local developers for creating content, targeting consumers in South Asia and the Indian diaspora, we are also looking at using these resources to develop games across genres for the global audience in the mid-term. We currently have four active developers locally and are in advanced talks with five more, which we expect to sign up in a couple of months.
Which games have you lined up for the domestic market?
After the success of 'Hanuman: Boy Warrior', the first game ever to be completely developed by an Indian game development company, which sold 85,000 units, we are aggressively looking at acquiring more content from local developers, woven around Indian mythology and contemporary contexts. We have a schedule of three Indian games for the next one year: mythological game ‘Chandragupta’, developed by Hyderabad-based Immersive Games (formerly Aurona Technologies, which was acquired by Pyramid Saimira) will hit the market this summer, and a sports-based game ‘Street Cricket’ from Trine Technologies of Mumbai in mid- 2010. Another mythological game ‘Eklavya’, developed by Hyderabad’s Gameshastra for the PlayStation3 platform, will be launched in mid-2011.
How are you competing with newer models from players like XBox and Nintendo?
Our focus is two-fold — price cuts and aggressively pushing our distribution ecosystem. We have already brought down the price of PlayStation3 to under Rs 20,000. We are looking at tapping 20 major cities in the country through national retailers and making the software and hardware available in smaller towns as well as at affordable price points. We will look at our pricing when the moment is right.