New Square Enix president pledges "aggressive" AI push in 2024
Further blockchain and cloud investments also in the works
Square Enix will be actively pushing into the generative AI field, exploring how it can be used in the company's internal games development.
The plans emerge from the Japanese publisher's annual New Year's Letter from its company president – this time penned by Takashi Kiryu, who took over from Yosuke Matsuda after the latter stepped down at the end of his ten-year tenure.
Kiryu observed that, while the potential for artificial intelligence has been debated for a few years, the rise of ChatGPT last year "made it apparent that the applicability of generative AI was by no means limited to text."
"I believe that generative AI has the potential not only to reshape what we create, but also to fundamentally change the processes by which we create, including programming," he added.
He continued: "We also intend to be aggressive in applying AI and other cutting-edge technologies to both our content development and our publishing functions.
"In the short term, our goal will be to enhance our development productivity and achieve greater sophistication in our marketing efforts. In the longer term, we hope to leverage those technologies to create new forms of content for consumers, as we believe that technological innovation represents business opportunities."
The last two New Year's Letters by Matsuda put more emphasis on investing in blockchain technology and the potential for Web 3.0 games. While Kiryu did not discuss this in detail, he did still identify blockchain as one of three "focus investment fields," alongside AI and the cloud.
He added that Square Enix "redefinied [its] overarching mission and goals for these three fields" in 2022, and is currently modifying its organisational structure to support these efforts.
Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inbox