Anime Growth Helps Offset Sony Losses From Pixomondo Shutdown, Bungie Troubles

Sony’s latest earnings report offered up another clear indication that anime has become one of the company’s most important entertainment businesses, helping offset more problematic performances elsewhere across its film, television, games, and VFX portfolios.

While Sony’s overall operating income rose 13% year over year to 1.45 trillion yen ($9.6 billion), profitability within Sony Pictures Entertainment declined 11% to 104.9 billion yen ($696 million), due in part to 27.1 billion yen ($180 million) in impairment and shutdown costs tied to its only recently acquired Pixomondo VFX division and continued weak delivery from parts of its traditional film and television business. That said, Crunchyroll streaming, theatrical, and other anime-related revenue emerged as key growth areas at the company.

Sony specifically pointed to increased Crunchyroll revenue fueled by subscriber growth and the record theatrical performance of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle. The company has increasingly emphasized anime during investor presentations over the last several years, reflecting how central the art form has become to Sony’s wider strategy.

That evolution has been unfolding for some time. Following its acquisition of Crunchyroll in 2021, Sony steadily expanded its anime footprint through investments in production, distribution, merchandising, music, and games. Recent partnerships and investments in companies such as Bandai Namco and Kadokawa have further strengthened Sony’s ties to the anime industry at a time when Japanese animation continues to grow in popularity worldwide.

That stands in sharp contrast with some of Sony’s other entertainment businesses, where red flags are not hard to find.

The company’s gaming division continues to navigate the fallout from Bungie’s restructuring, a lackluster Marathon launch, Destiny’s downfall, and Sony’s uneven push into live-service gaming. Several PlayStation-related layoffs, project cancellations, and studio closures over the past two years have complicated what had once appeared to be a straightforward expansion strategy for the company’s games business. Bungie-related impairment losses alone totaled 120.1 billion yen ($797 million) during the fiscal year, underscoring the mounting costs associated with Sony’s live service gaming ambitions.

Meanwhile, the closure of Pixomondo highlighted instabilities still rippling through the VFX sector, even at the top level. The Oscar-winning company, which built a world-class profile through its virtual production and effects work during the streaming boom, became another casualty of the broader contraction affecting film and television production across the industry.

Circling back to the silver lining, Sony’s latest earnings report reinforces a reality that has become increasingly apparent over the last several years, and one that we’ve run out of different ways to express. Anime is no longer a complementary business inside the company’s entertainment portfolio. It has become one of Sony’s central growth strategies, increasingly capable of subsidizing weaker performance elsewhere across its entertainment empire.