Sony says the “effective” AI tools will lead to more games on the market

Anyone who follows modern sports knows that Easy to use game engines and the rapid change in the digital divide has helped to support a significant increase in the number of commercial games released each year, both on the console store and especially on Steam. Now, the president of Sony Interactive Entertainment and CEO Hideaki Nishino says that we should expect the number of new games to accelerate significantly because new AI development tools make it easier for developers large and small to follow new projects effectively.

In disclosure to investors on FridayNishino also said that Sony “expects to see a significant increase in the volume and variety of content available to gamers” in the near future. This increase is an inevitable result of AI development tools that are “lowering creative barriers, speeding up development cycles, and enabling more developers to enter the market,” he said.

In evidence, Nishino cited Sony’s first-party efforts. Game developers within Sony are already using AI tools to “automat(e) iterative processes” in areas such as color assurance, 3D modeling, and animation, he said.

This includes a 3D recording tool called Mockingbird that Nishino said allows Sony artists to turn unedited footage into game animations very quickly. While this tool won’t replace mobile animators, it means that “a photo shoot that would have taken hours can now be completed in less time,” Nishino said.

Machine learning tools have also been able to take “videos of real hair” and apply them to autographs that can capture “hundreds of strands,” instead of the “laborious process” of animators placing the strands individually, Nishino said.

Elsewhere, Sony Group President and CEO Hiroki Totoki praised the “success” supported by AI tools, saying it could lead to “innovative and ambitious projects – tasks that were previously difficult to do due to complexity and time.”

Totoki also highlighted a pilot partnership with publisher Bandai Namco that “achieved significant gains in speed and productivity per capita” in video production. While the team needs to fine-tune the AI ​​models of each model to avoid issues of “inconsistency and control,” Totoki added that these models can, in some cases, support “high-quality and realistic outputs that were not possible in the past due to production time constraints.”