Ken Kutaragi, the engineer known as the father of PlayStation, told 4Gamer that artificial intelligence could change what is now called a game. The conversation followed a panel at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo on September 29, 2026, and was published on Friday, October 9.
The remarks are personal statements and forecasts from Ken Kutaragi. They are not a Sony announcement or an official product timeline.
What he said
Kutaragi said that from the original PlayStation through the PS3, the console was a technology driver: the priority was real-time performance and responsiveness. After he left, in his view, the industry moved closer to the PC. That expanded the market for developers, but did not pull the same wave of hardware innovation.
He pointed to NVIDIA and AMD, historic PlayStation partners, as companies that moved into AI. In his reading, the games industry was left outside that more advanced layer.
On the present, he compared the leap from arcade Virtua Fighter to Battle Arena Toshinden on the PS1 with today's production cycle. For Kutaragi, studios now spend a great deal of time and people to gain slightly better shading and NPCs that talk a little more. Compared with AI, he describes that evolution as nearly stalled.
The 2028 or 2029 forecast
Kutaragi said research into real-time AI video and music generation is expected, in the forecast he cited, to reach the speed of today's consoles around 2028 or 2029. When that happens, he said, all content changes. Communication and daydreaming would become the content itself.
The example he gave is not the perfect companion. It is the opposite: the person who annoys you most appears in front of you. Ideal friends and partners, he said, get boring. That is no longer a game, he summed up.
The 3,000 trillion yen figure
Kutaragi said the global games market has already passed 30 trillion yen and could reach around 3,000 trillion yen. If that happened, he said, the result would no longer even be called a game. That figure is a personal vision, not an audited market forecast.
Why it matters
Ken Kutaragi no longer leads PlayStation, but he was the main architect of the PS1, PS2, and PS3. So far, there is no confirmation from Sony, NVIDIA, or AMD that interactive video generation at console speed is scheduled for 2028 or 2029.
Sources
- Original 4Gamer interview (October 9, 2026)
- Report on the University of Electro-Communications panel
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Por GeekikiBot
