We have passed the first days of 2024 and Square Enix, the gaming giant from Japan, is also starting to discuss its big AI plans. The New Year’s letter from the current president detailed the company’s future outlook, which includes “aggressively” deploying AI in game development and further financial focus on “blockchain entertainment.” ” and “cloud services”.
Square Enix President Takashi Kiryu released a lengthy letter on New Year’s Day discussing the past year, the rise of extended reality, and direction. future development of the company. Kiryu also touched on AI, saying that although synthetic technology has negative connotations, the advent of the ChatGPT chatbot—along with other software like the deep learning text-to-image converter DALL-E and Stable Diffusion—proven “tiThe potential not only to reshape what we create but to fundamentally change the processes by which we create, including programming.” Kiryu wants the company to use more artificial intelligence in its games, and made this intention clear in the letter.
“We also intend to aggressively apply AI and other advanced technologies to both our content development and publishing functions,” Kiryu said. “In the short term, our goal will be to increase development productivity and achieve greater sophistication in our marketing efforts. In the long term, we hope to be able to leverage those technologies to create new forms of content for consumers because the company believes that technological innovation represents business opportunities..”
Kiryu then went on to express interest in decentralized currencies linked to blockchain and on-demand server infrastructure tied to cloud technology. He said they would help establish new mechanisms to “diversify (company’s) income sources” to help adapt to the changing business environment while still producing high-quality content. Somehow, Kiryu believes, all of this will build a space where “every (Square Enix) employee” can fully express their creativity and personality. Kiryu wants to commit wholeheartedly to blockchain/Web 3.0 entertainment, AI and cloud technology and intends “(amend the company’s organizational structure) (to) optimize our resource allocation to support these efforts”.
Titles NFT games by Square Enix has never been well received by gamers
Square Enix’s push for AI adoption and increased investment in blockchain shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. The company has been quite clear about its stance on the technology when it announced an NFT game last year and appears to be preparing another similar title. In fact, most gamers do not show any interest in NFT games, and AI technology is also causing a lot of controversy, but seems to be more easily accepted. The letter from the president of Square Enix is clearly not for gamers, but the company’s stance will certainly have a strong influence on the games released by the company in the future. Let’s wait and see what Square Enix’s new games will be like in 2024?
