Capcom: AI Won't Make Our Games, Just Speed Them Up

Ever wondered if your favorite Capcom games might soon be made by AI? Well, you can relax. Capcom has just cleared the air about how it plans to use artificial intelligence, and it's not what you might think.

During its yearly recruitment conference on October 2, programmer Satoshi Ishida talked about the company's plan to incrementally improve its RE Engine with a program called REX (short for RE Next Engine). Instead of building a brand-new engine from scratch, Capcom will take steps to upgrade the RE Engine piece by piece, and that includes using AI. This news had some fans worried, so IGN reached out to Capcom for clarification.

A Capcom spokesperson explained that games are becoming massive undertakings, taking up huge amounts of time and resources. AI, being a rapidly advancing technology, could help solve these issues by making developers more efficient. The AI tools would assist with things like improving development tools, testing game code, and analyzing large chunks of data. Capcom's vision for REX is to integrate these AI tools into the next iteration of the RE Engine, helping the company make games faster with the best tools available.

But here's the key point: Capcom has no plans to use generative AI to create game content. Generative AI is the kind that creates content based on a prompt, like images or text. Instead, any AI used with the RE Engine will be for speeding up processes and helping development teams be more efficient. That means AI won't be used to create assets or programs in games.

This isn't the first time Capcom has addressed this. Back in March, during a shareholders' meeting, the company was asked about its AI intentions. They stated, "We will not implement assets generated by AI into our games. However, we plan to proactively use it as a contributing technology to improve the efficiency and productivity of the game development process. To this end, we are currently exploring ways to implement it in various areas, including graphics, sound and programming."

So, what does this mean for you? It means the next Resident Evil or Mega Man game will still be crafted by human hands, but the development process could be faster and smoother thanks to AI behind the scenes. Capcom's upcoming titles include Resident Evil Veronica and Mega Man: Dual Override, so we'll see how these tools shape their future.

What do you think about Capcom's approach to AI? Will you be picking up their upcoming games? Let us know in the comments!