{"id":659777,"date":"2026-05-09T12:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T12:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/659777\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T12:30:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T12:30:08","slug":"sony-says-efficient-ai-tools-will-lead-to-even-more-games-flooding-the-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/659777\/","title":{"rendered":"Sony says “efficient” AI tools will lead to even more games flooding the market"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anyone following the modern game industry knows that easy-to-use game engines<\/a> and the accelerating shift to digital distribution<\/a> have helped enable a massive increase in the quantity of commercial games released each year, both on console storefronts<\/a> and especially on Steam<\/a>. Now, Sony Interactive Entertainment President and CEO Hideaki Nishino says we should expect the rate of new game releases to accelerate even faster as new AI development tools make it easier for developers big and small to pursue new projects efficiently.<\/p>\n

In a presentation to investors on Friday<\/a>, Nishino noted that Sony \u201cexpect[s] to see a meaningful increase in the volume and diversity of content available to players\u201d in the near future. That increase is the inevitable result of AI development tools that are \u201clowering barriers to creation, accelerating development cycles, and enabling more creators to enter the market,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

By way of evidence, Nishino cited Sony\u2019s first-party game development efforts. Gamemakers inside Sony are already using AI tools to \u201cautomat[e] repetitive workflows\u201d in areas like quality assurance, 3D modeling, and animation, he said.<\/p>\n

That includes a 3D animation tool called Mockingbird that Nishino said allows Sony artists to convert raw motion capture data into in-game animation much faster. While this tool can\u2019t replace the motion-capture actors themselves, it means that \u201canimation work that would have taken hours can now be completed in a fraction of a second,\u201d Nishino said.<\/p>\n

Machine learning tools have also been able to take in \u201cvideos of real hairstyles\u201d and apply them to automated animation models that can realistically model \u201chundreds of strands,\u201d replacing the \u201clabor-intensive process\u201d of animators placing those strands individually, Nishino said.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the presentation, Sony Group President and CEO Hiroki Totoki praised the increased \u201cefficiency\u201d enabled by AI tools, saying it would, in turn, lead to \u201cmore innovative and ambitious projects\u2014projects that were previously difficult to pursue due to constraints of cost and time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Totoki also highlighted a pilot partnership with publisher Bandai Namco that \u201cidentified massive gains in speed and productivity per person\u201d in video production. While the team has needed to fine-tune generic AI models to prevent problems of \u201cconsistency and controllability,\u201d Totoki added that these models can, in some cases, help enable \u201chighly sophisticated and realistic outputs which were not feasible before due to production time constraints.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anyone following the modern game industry knows that easy-to-use game engines and the accelerating shift to digital distribution…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-659777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}