Mario Legend Creator Talks AI: Nintendo ‘Going In The Opposite Direction’

In recent years, large swaths of the gaming industry have embraced generative AI, both on the development side and for new user-generated content tools. But legendary Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto says his company “would rather go in a different direction” when it comes to AI technology.

in Recent interview with The New York TimesMiyamoto said this wasn’t just a contradiction on Nintendo’s part. “It might seem like we’re going in the opposite direction just to go in the opposite direction, but we’re really trying to find what makes Nintendo special,” Miyamoto said. “There’s a lot of talk about AI, for example. When that happens, everyone starts going in the same direction, but that’s the direction Nintendo would rather go in a different direction.”

Miyamoto’s statement comes a few months after Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa took a more open stance. At an investor Q&A session in July“Generative AI, which has become a big topic recently, can be used in creative ways, but we recognize that it may also raise intellectual property issues,” Furukawa said at the time.

Ignoring generative AI would certainly send Nintendo in a “different direction” than many major gaming companies. Electronic Arts’ recent investor day Full of talk about algorithmic artificial intelligence And its potential to make game development more efficient. Microsoft, which has invested heavily in OpenAI, has pledged to integrate Copilot chatbots into games like Minecraft To provide conversational advice to gamers. Nvidia talks about the capabilities of its generative AI model ACE Fully unwritten power for non-playable characters in the game..

On the other hand, Nintendo has often been reluctant to join various tech industries. While Nintendo said it was “looking” into virtual reality in 2016, it quickly became clear that the company had no interest in following Sony into VR (despite the cardboard Labo VR device).

“If you look at VR headsets, I doubt they will attract a mainstream audience,” said Philippe Lavoie, general manager of Nintendo France, in a 2018 interview. “What new thing would we bring compared to our competitors? If we did exactly the same thing as everyone else, we would surely die because we are smaller than them.”