Sakurai Warns AI Game Development Will Flood the Market with Unoriginal, Unprofitable Titles
Masahiro Sakurai, creator of Super Smash Bros. and Kirby, shared concerns about generative AI in game development during an interview with Denfaminico Gamer. He said AI will increase the number of games, but "most of them will become unprofitable titles." Content created with AI or mass-produced at low quality, he added, "will simply be reproductions of systems seen in various other games," lacking the originality that defines meaningful work.
Sakurai noted that highly original games are harder for AI to imitate, yet originality itself makes a title harder to market. Players often understand new games by comparison to familiar ones, and AI can only recombine existing elements rather than invent new concepts. He cited Librarian, released this past April, as an example of a simple, easily understood game that is ripe for AI-driven imitation. Librarian tasks players with restoring order to a magical library's jumbled books, and its simple mechanics spawned imitators such as Supermarket Chaos and Needle in a Haystack Simulator within weeks. Sakurai's point: the simpler the concept, the easier it is for AI to churn out copies.
Using fellow designer Fumito Ueda and Shadow of the Colossus as an example, Sakurai argued that AI could analyze and replicate an existing game, but "would not be able to create whatever Ueda himself will create in the future." In his view, the heart of game creation remains human creativity and inspiration, and technological progress should not come at the cost of artistic value or playability.
Sakurai long served as chair of the Game Designer's Award, part of the Japan Game Awards, which ran for 16 years starting in 2010 and ended in 2026. The final award went to Word Game, a puzzle title by Taiwan's Team9 that turns Chinese characters into playable objects. Sakurai said he ended the award because after years of searching he could not find a suitable successor to carry on the judging. He admitted he dislikes forcing games with different audiences and goals into a single ranking, but continued participating because public recognition makes developers happy and leaves a visible record.
Sakurai emphasized that these remarks reflect his personal views on game creation and the market, not Nintendo's official predictions about new projects or finances. He urged the industry to remember that creating new gameplay and experiences remains the irreplaceable responsibility of human creators.