Square Enix’s CEO wants to be “more aggressive” in applying AI to game development and publishing going forward.
New Square Enix CEO Takashi Kiryu shared a New Year’s letter for 2024, outlining his goals for the coming year. A large portion of the letter to the company’s fans actually takes a wider look at AI in 2023, and how the various tools that have come from it, including ChatGPT, have burst onto the scene.
“The introduction of ChatGPT, which allows anyone to easily produce writing or translations or to engage in text-based dialogue, sparked the rapid spread of generative AIs,” Kiryu writes. “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.”
“We also intend to be aggressive in applying AI and other cutting-edge technologies to both our content development and our publishing functions,” the CEO continues. “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.”
This is one of Kiryu’s first big public-facing messages for Square Enix as a whole since he took the post of CEO last year. If you can recall the beginning of 2023, you might recall that then-Square Enix CEO Yosuke Matsuda went big on blockchain and NFT technologies in his own New Year’s message, both of which Kiryu barely mentions in his own message.
Matsuda went on hyping up Square Enix’s blockchain efforts into March 2023, even after the ventures were met with backlash from Square Enix fans around the world. It remains to be seen exactly how Square Enix will implement technologies like ChatGPT and others in its game development and marketing. Could we be about to see the AI tool write characters for the developer’s games?
On the immediate horizon for Square Enix is Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on February 29, tipped as one of the most exciting games in a packed early 2024 window. After that, the company has Final Fantasy 14’s Dawntrail expansion coming in summer 2024, and whacky shooter Foamstars due at some point in the year.
You can head over to our new games 2024 guide for a look at the other big releases throughout the rest of the year.
