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Sony's latest financial report is in, and would you believe it? The company is keen to tell investors just how much its business is going to be improved by AI. PlayStation is just one part of the larger Sony business, but sluggish PS5 sales and big losses around Marathon and Bungie are having their effects. Don't worry, though – PlayStation's investment in AI is going to make it all better, and we've gotten some specifics about how the tech is being used in games like Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered.
"At PlayStation, our goal is always to be the best place to play and the best place to publish," according to Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hideaki Nishino, whose statements during the earnings call were transcribed by Yahoo Finance. "We see AI as a powerful tool to help us in this mission."
Those are pretty standard vagaries about AI, but Nishino did offer some specifics. Notably, he says, "game developers are automating repetitive workloads, improving software engineering productivity, and accelerating areas like quality assurance, 3D modeling, and animations through new AI-powered tools."
That includes an animation tool called Mockingbird, which "quickly animates 3D facial model based on the performance capture." Nishino emphasizes that this is not a replacement for human performers, but it optimizes "how we process the data from these live captures. With Mockingbird, animation work that would have taken hours can now be completed in a fraction of a second."
This isn't purely theoretical, either. "We have already seen the teams at Naughty Dog, San Diego Studio, and other adopt the tool, including in released titles like Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered," Nishino explains.
While the stink of purely AI-generated content looms large, this is – in theory – the kind of thing AI is actually useful for, helping to automate tedious tasks so that developers can focus their attention on more creative work. That's why you won't find an AI disclosure on Horizon's Steam store page, as Valve doesn't require devs to be up front about "efficiency gains" from AI, as opposed to fully AI-generated content.
Nishino also cites the machine learning-driven PSSR upscaling tech available on PS5 Pro as another example of AI wins, offering improved resolution and performance for games like Saros and Ghost of Yotei. And, more broadly, he says players will get "more immersion, more adventures, and fresh ways to enjoy their favorite characters" thanks to the emerging tech. Simultaneously, AI will offer publishers a "more efficient production environment and a better discovery to ensure their games reach the right audience."
Of course, the reality of these assertions remains to be seen. The biggest effect AI has had on the gaming world so far is making consoles and PCs dramatically more expensive, as data centers gobble up RAM in absurd volumes. That's not Sony's fault or responsibility, of course, but the notion that the tech pushing the game industry's head underwater is the same thing that will save it from drowning is difficult to reckon with in the short term.
