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What just happened? It’s hard to find a company these days that isn’t going all in on generative AI. Despite the pushback and job losses, we’re seeing more video game giants embracing the technology with gusto. Nintendo, however, isn’t one of them, with Shigeru Miyamoto revealing that when it comes to AI, his company would “rather go in a different direction.”
Miyamoto, the creator of some of Nintendo’s most successful franchises (Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, etc.), still serves as one of the company’s representative directors and an executive.
In an interview with The New York Times that was part of the celebrations of the just-opened Nintendo Museum, Miyamoto talked about what makes the Japanese gaming giant different. He cited AI as an example of how the company is taking a different approach to its competitors.
Shigeru Miyamoto
“It might seem like we are just going the opposite direction for the sake of going in the opposite direction, but it really is trying to find what makes Nintendo special,” Miyamoto said.
“There is a lot of talk about AI, for example,” he continued. “When that happens, everyone starts to go in the same direction, but that is where Nintendo would rather go in a different direction.”
Going in a different direction doesn’t necessarily mean Nintendo isn’t going to touch artificial intelligence at all. Company president Shuntaro Furukawa said in July that generative AI can be used “in creative ways,” though he added the caveat that it “also raises issues with intellectual property rights.”
“We have decades of know-how in creating the best gaming experiences for our players,” Furukawa added. “While we are open to utilizing technological developments, we will work to continue delivering value that is unique to Nintendo and cannot be created by technology alone.”
It appears that one area of AI that Nintendo might be using is a detection tool that can identify copyrighted images and serve takedown notices. A company called Tracer issued DMCA complaints to X users who had posted non-family friendly images of Mario, many of which were created by xAI’s Grok, which doesn’t have guardrails as strict as those found in ChatGPT and similar chatbots.
Generative AI continues to propagate within the gaming industry. Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson praised the technology this year, claiming it is set to make EA 30% more efficient while boosting monetization by 20% over the next five years. He also thinks it will convince players to spend 10-20% more money on its games. There’s also Embracer – a company that has laid off 1,500 people over the last year – which unveiled its “human-centric” AI-powered game development ambitions in June.
Nvidia is pushing generative AI into games harder than anyone, which isn’t a surprise, given that it makes most of the advanced chips powering the tech. Its Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) for Games is said to allow players to have natural language conversations with NPCs like they were talking to a real person. It will debut in mech fighting game Mecha BREAK next year. More recently, CEO Jensen Huang said “We can’t do computer graphics anymore without artificial intelligence,” referring to upscaling tech like DLSS.
