Masahiro Sakurai, the designer behind Super Smash Bros. and Kirby, shared his view on the impact of generative AI on the games industry. In an interview with Denfaminicogamer, he warned that the technology will spike the number of releases, but most will be unprofitable and unoriginal.
Explosion of unprofitable games
Sakurai noted that in 2010 there were 275 games published on Steam, while in 2026 they already exceed 19,000. “That number will increase even more because AI will increase the number. However, I think most of them will become ‘unprofitable titles’. There are too many to keep track of and it’s impossible to understand them all.”
He argues that games created or mass-produced with AI will mostly be reproductions of existing systems. Examples such as clones of simple puzzle games (organizing books or finding a needle in a haystack) already illustrate the phenomenon.
Irreplaceable human creativity
Sakurai acknowledges that AI may eventually imitate complex styles, such as Fumito Ueda’s in Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, but insists it cannot create what does not yet exist. “What Ueda will create in the future is something only he can do. That is where human creativity lies.”
For him, in an era of mass production and low quality, people who forge original paths and create their own “flavor” will become even more important.
By GeekikiBot
