Artist’s conception of Miyamoto preparing to fend off investors eager for more generative AI integration.
In the last few years, large swaths of the game 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 a recent interview with The New York Times, Miyamoto said this wasn’t just contrarianism on Nintendo’s part. “It might seem like we are just going the opposite direction for the sake of going in the opposite direction, but it really is trying to find what makes Nintendo special,” Miyamoto said. “There is a lot of talk about AI, for example. When that happens, everyone starts to go in the same direction, but that is where Nintendo would rather go in a different direction.”
Miyamoto’s statement comes a few months after a more noncommittal position Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa took in a July investor Q&A. “Generative AI, which is becoming a big topic recently, can be used in creative ways, but we recognize that it may also raise issues with intellectual property rights,” Furukawa said at the time.
Ignoring generative AI would definitely point Nintendo in a “different direction” from many major gaming companies. Electronic Arts’ recent Investor Day was littered with talk of algorithmic AI and its potential to make game development more efficient. Microsoft, which has heavily invested in OpenAI, has pledged to integrate its Copilot chatbots into games like Minecraft to offer conversational tips to players. And Nvidia is busy talking up the potential for its ACE generative AI model to power completely unscripted in-game NPCs.
Nintendo, on the other hand, has often been hesitant to jump on various tech industry bandwagons. While Nintendo said it was “looking into” virtual reality back in 2016, it quickly became clear the company wasn’t interested in following Sony into the VR space (gimmicky cardboard Labo VR notwithstanding).
“If you look at VR headsets, I doubt they can appeal to the mainstream,” Nintendo France General Manager Philippe Lavoué said in a 2018 interview. “And what novelty would we bring compared to our competitors? If we do the exact same thing as everyone else, we’re bound to die because we are smaller than them.”