News Nintendo president rejects the use of generative AI in upcoming games — issues of pedigree and copyright cited

[Admin]

Breaking from other big names in the gaming industry, Nintendo stands by game development without any use of generative AI.

Nintendo president rejects the use of generative AI in upcoming games — issues of pedigree and copyright cited : Read more

 

[Notton]

Nintendo did a good thing, but I suspect this decision hinged heavily on IP rights.
I would imagine Nintendo would dominate the news cycle -in a bad way- if they got caught using stolen IP.

The other key indicator. If noobisoft and EA is doing it, that is a good sign you shouldn't.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

That's the wrong stance. What they need to do is develop their own "AI" to use for things which devs don't spend much time on, such as NPCs, and develop algorithms (these days known as "AI") to efficiently create "random" textures for things such as water or sky to create a more immersive game. Basically things studios devote about 0.5% of development time anyway and what fan mods fix.

 

[kjfatl]

That's the wrong stance. What they need to do is develop their own "AI" to use for things which devs don't spend much time on, such as NPCs, and develop algorithms (these days known as "AI") to efficiently create "random" textures for things such as water or sky to create a more immersive game. Basically things studios devote about 0.5% of development time anyway and what fan mods fix.

It is likely that Nintendo is developing its own AI algorithms, trained using its own data with watermarks designed to be detectable in products developed using Nintendo game data as source. Then nature of the watermarks will be secret so they are not easily detected and removed. The AI will of course be independent of hardware supplier and will be offered as a product to other game developers. Taking this approach will give them the profit, leaving NVIDIA and Open AI in the cold.
If you sell a product and Nintendo detects their watermarks in it, Nintendo will demand and get royalties from you.

 

[TheyCallMeContra]

It is likely that Nintendo is developing its own AI algorithms, trained using its own data with watermarks designed to be detectable in products developed using Nintendo game data as source. Then nature of the watermarks will be secret so they are not easily detected and removed. The AI will of course be independent of hardware supplier and will be offered as a product to other game developers. Taking this approach will give them the profit, leaving NVIDIA and Open AI in the cold.
If you sell a product and Nintendo detects their watermarks in it, Nintendo will demand and get royalties from you.

likely according to...?

 

[Ferlucio]

Releasing the same pokemon game for 30 years really takes a special kind of creativity.

 

[kjfatl]

Releasing the same pokemon game for 30 years really takes a special kind of creativity.

Today, roughly 50% of all games across mobile, PC, and console globally are made with Unity, including ~70% of the world’s top 1,000 mobile games.

 

[TheyCallMeContra]

Take a look at unity.com, Nintendo's developer website. Nintendo has been in the software business for 40 years and has a long term view of business. The comments I made reflect my years in the computer development business, and the understanding of how to win in this type of business for 30 or more years. They are not going to get their main business captive to a company like IBM, DEC, NCR or Nvidia, all of which were at or near the top of the market for a decade or more.

Unity has nothing to do with Nintendo at all, dude. I have no idea why you're bringing up the Unity Engine right now. Who misled you this severely??

Nintendo has only dabbled in that engine for mobile games, as well. BOTW and TOTK sure AF aren't running on Unity, lmao.

Releasing the same pokemon game for 30 years really takes a special kind of creativity.

Nintendo shares ownership of the Pokemon license but doesn't actually develop Pokemon games, that's GameFreak sitting on their laurels specifically. Mainstream Nintendo franchises developed in-house have kept a higher bar of quality than that, particularly Zelda, Mario, and the upcoming Metroid Prime 4.

 

[mac_angel]

So, devil's advocate sort of thing about the whole "intellectual property rights". You could use the exact same argument on everyone that has ever produced something. Including musicians, artists, etc. People will always be influenced by other artists. You wouldn't be able to tell someone that since they went to an art gallery that they are no longer allowed to paint because they looked at someone else's work.

I'm not saying I'm condoning AI and the intellectual property arguments, I'm just pointing out that Ai is literally doing the same thing that people do, just at a much, much greater speed and scale.

 

[kjfatl]

Unity has nothing to do with Nintendo at all, dude. I have no idea why you're bringing up the Unity Engine right now. Who misled you this severely??

Nintendo has only dabbled in that engine for mobile games, as well. BOTW and TOTK sure AF aren't running on Unity, lmao.


Nintendo shares ownership of the Pokemon license but doesn't actually develop Pokemon games, that's GameFreak sitting on their laurels specifically. Mainstream Nintendo franchises developed in-house have kept a higher bar of quality than that, particularly Zelda, Mario, and the upcoming Metroid Prime 4.

Sorry about that. I followed a link from the Nintendo website and assumed that Nintendo owned the product. I do know that Nintendo has taken a significant amount of the money that came in from Pokémon Go and used it for software that they sell to others for gaming development. Check you sources carefully before you invest. We all make mistakes.

 

[Ferlucio]

Today, roughly 50% of all games across mobile, PC, and console globally are made with Unity, including ~70% of the world’s top 1,000 mobile games.

Yeah, and few of them are good. Of course there are some great game on unity, especially back before they killed their own business. But quantity is not the factory I was criticizing in the original comment and thus your factoid doesn't really add or detract anything.

 

[TheyCallMeContra]

So, devil's advocate sort of thing about the whole "intellectual property rights". You could use the exact same argument on everyone that has ever produced something. Including musicians, artists, etc. People will always be influenced by other artists. You wouldn't be able to tell someone that since they went to an art gallery that they are no longer allowed to paint because they looked at someone else's work.

I'm not saying I'm condoning AI and the intellectual property arguments, I'm just pointing out that Ai is literally doing the same thing that people do, just at a much, much greater speed and scale.

It...isn't, though.

For people to take reference from other artists or even outright trace requires a very significant piece of their finite lifespan, especially when we start talking professional artists who are actually trying to turn around quality product. Generative AI is barely a step away from what we used to call spam, its loudest advocates are all openly hoping to wholly replace artists in the market by overtly stealing their work and style...nah, dude.

A human being learning something is orders of magnitude different from a computer generating an image made from infinite pieces of stolen content. It's even less effort than actually copying a piece of art directly, and most importantly it's genuinely soulless. Getting a machine to draw your pictures for you is missing the entire point of drawing pictures to begin with.

 

[parkerthon]

In 5 years when genAI is everywhere and people have stopped screaming about it, that’s when Nintendo will admit they’ve been using it in some form or another for development the last five years. GenAI is everywhere now. Unless they are doing everything by hand, writing code in text files, not using productivity tools to their fullest. Not surprising to hear something like this from the company that also barely tolerates the internet’s existence in 2024.

 

[hotaru251]

the same pokemon game for 30 years

must of never played B/W/2.

they were best games becasue they were such a different kind of pkmn game.

 

[TheyCallMeContra]

In 5 years when genAI is everywhere and people have stopped screaming about it, that’s when Nintendo will admit they’ve been using it in some form or another for development the last five years. GenAI is everywhere now. Unless they are doing everything by hand, writing code in text files, not using productivity tools to their fullest. Not surprising to hear something like this from the company that also barely tolerates the internet’s existence in 2024.

No game developer worth their salt in the majority of Nintendo's existence would be made more hirable by replacing actual training to write code and/or use development and design tools properly with gen AI use. Be real.

 

[why_wolf]

This is just Nintendo's philosophy to not really follow trends. Mostly because trend following inevitably leads to watering down your own product. It's why Nintendo touches mobile gaming so sparingly. A low effort Zelda gacha game would only damage the currently perceived quality of Nintendo as a whole.

Its easy short term money, yes, with potentially damage long term consequences. Unless your business plan is to just milk addicted whales forever. In which case you're not really building fun games, which is Nintendo's whole MO.