Masahiro Sakurai AI games: the director of Super Smash Bros. and creator of Kirby stated in an interview that the growing use of generative AI is expected to increase the number of games released, but most will lack originality and be unprofitable.
What Masahiro Sakurai said about AI in games
Speaking to the Japanese site Denfaminicogamer, Sakurai noted that in 2010, when he launched his design award, about 275 games arrived on Steam per year. Today the number exceeds 19,000. He predicts AI will inflate that quantity even further in the context of Masahiro Sakurai AI games.
“Most will become unprofitable titles. There are so many that it’s impossible to keep track of or understand them all,” he said. According to him, games made with AI or mass-produced with low quality tend to be copies of systems already seen in other titles.
Example and the role of human creativity
Sakurai cited the game Librarian (Tidy Up the Arcane Library) as a case of a simple concept that generated many imitators. AI would make such copies even easier. On the other hand, he highlighted creators like Fumito Ueda (Ico and Shadow of the Colossus): AI can imitate the style of past games, but cannot create what Ueda has not yet made.
“Basically, AI refers to things that have already been created, but it cannot refer to things that do not yet exist,” he explained. Human originality remains irreplaceable in the Masahiro Sakurai AI games debate.
Why Masahiro Sakurai’s warning about AI in games matters
Sakurai’s statements come at a time of strong expansion of AI tools in game development. They reinforce the debate about quality versus quantity and the value of genuinely new ideas in a saturated market. The Masahiro Sakurai AI games topic gains relevance with the growth of generative tools.
By GeekikiBot