The studio behind Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm and Asura’s Wrath, seems to be the next developer that is jumping into the AI craze in the industry. Studio president Hiroshi Matsuyama revealed this initiative of utilizing new techs in a recent interview with Japanese gaming media outlet Famitsu. He explained how AI could help tackle the rising costs and speed up development for CyberConnect2 anime games like Naruto and Demon Slayer, among others.
“Twenty years ago, a game could be made in about a year even with just 10 people. Our shortest project was 10 months. It’s unthinkable now,“ Matsuyama said regarding the decision to expand the company to around 400 employees. “If you were to make a game today, it would take three to four years, or even five or six years. Game specifications and user expectations have also risen.”
The company is now looking for ways to stay competitive as development costs reach ’10 billion yen.’ Matsuyama emphasized that traditional crunch tactics no longer guarantee success. Newfangled tech like AI might be the answer for CyberConnect2.
“Things have changed dramatically […] around the time the PlayStation 3 was released. ‘You can’t win with just hard work and determination alone,’ I should say. The idea of ’if we stay up all night, we can push through’ no longer worked,” explains Matsuyama.
“Instead of saying, ‘We’ll do our best,’ we need to explore, ‘How can we beat other companies and ourselves?’ In other words, we need to find the best strength that we can use.”
The studio currently has around 10 projects in development, with Fuga: Melodies of Steel 3 and Demon Slayer: The Hinokami Chronicles 2 scheduled for 2025. However, managing multiple projects at once means finding new ways to streamline production.
Matsuyama highlighted how AI can improve early development phases for anime games, particularly in design and concept art. As AI technology keeps evolving, CyberConnect2 finds it necessary to study it, examining where it can be utilized and where it cannot be utilized.
“For example, you used to get about 20 illustrators and prepare about 100 image boards over two months. Now, you can do that work in a short time by using AI,” the CyberConnect2 president said. “I think AI is useful in the stage where we share a large amount of visual information and work out the details together.”
“We have established a laboratory and are conducting internal studies to see if there are other ways to utilize AI,” added Matsuyama.
