Square Enix boss sees value of films, comics, XR, AI and embracing change
Do you want to get the latest gaming industry news straight to your inbox? Sign up for our daily and weekly newsletters here .
Takashi Kiryu, president of Square Enix, dropped a letter about his plans to ring in the new year. In it, he didn’t announce any dramatic changes, but he explained his interest in both investing in the Japanese company’s core business and expanding into new areas like films, TV, XR and AI.
Square Enix is one of the biggest triple-A game companies in Japan and it typically forecasts its direction a New Year message. This is the first such message from Kiryu, who became president in June 2023.
He noted that while COVID-19 subsided in 2023, the world saw an intensification of geopolitical risks and sharp inflation. That added to the uncertainty and change underway in digital entertainment. To deal with that, Kiryu said he saw extended reality (XR) technologies moved forward during the year and the future will see more application of XR to fuse the real world and virtual worlds like never before.
He also said it was clear that “generative AI was by no means limited to text, and the subsequent months saw a quick succession of launches of new services and content that expanded generative AI into a variety of domains with close ties to digital entertainment, including images, video, and music.”
The AI Impact Tour
Getting to an AI Governance Blueprint – Request an invite for the Jan 10 event.
He added, “I believe that generative AI has the potential not only to reshape what we create, but also to fundamentally change the processes by which we create, including programming.” Since becoming president, Kiryu has studied the opportunities before the company.
In Square Enix’s digital entertainment business, he
Read more on venturebeat.com
