Konami President Says AI Won't Shake Up Game Dev Much

Ever feel like every gaming headline these days is either hyping AI up or panicking about it? Well, Konami's president just shrugged at the whole thing, and honestly, it's a bit of a breath of fresh air.

In the company's latest earnings report, president Hideki Hayakawa shared Konami's take on the rapid spread of AI and what it might mean for the games industry. As spotted by Dengeki and translated by Automaton, Hayakawa said AI probably "won't bring a significant change" to the game market.

He was also asked about the idea that AI could lower the barrier to entry for aspiring developers. Hayakawa pushed back on that too. "Entry barriers have already been lowered by the advancements of generic game engines and the spread of UGC (user generated content)," he said.

And even if AI does make production more efficient, Hayakawa doesn't think that's the magic ingredient. "Even if AI use does lead to improvements in production efficiency, I believe that the most important factors in producing entertaining and innovative video games are people and creators." That's a pretty clear statement of where Konami stands.

It's worth putting this in context, because the wider industry mood is all over the place right now. Plenty of people see AI as an inevitable efficiency booster, while others worry about AI-generated art and voice lines, not to mention the AI-assisted coding boom that has some big players very excited. The question of whether a line will ever be drawn is still very much open.

For Konami, though, there may be no need to draw one just yet. The company simply isn't buying the hype at the moment, even as most gaming execs stay far more bullish on AI in game development. Of course, these are second-hand translated quotes, so there's always a bit of fog around the exact nuance.

Still, it's an interesting stance from a major publisher: people first, tools second. Whether that holds up as AI tools keep improving is anyone's guess.

What do you think? Is Konami right that creators will always matter most, or is AI going to change game dev more than we expect?