Square Enix president Takashi Kiryu has penned a New Year's Letter that outlines some of his vision for the company, and it reveals it plans to "be aggressive in applying AI and other cutting-edge technologies to both our content development and our publishing functions."
These New Year's Letters have become a staple of New Year's Day recently, and previous ones have discussed the desire to explore NFTs, blockchain games, the metaverse, and more. This year, AI took a turn in the spotlight.
Kiryu began by talking about how AI and its "potential implications" have long been the subject of "academic debate." However, he says, the rise of ChatGPT and similar generative AI programs have the "potential not only to reshape what we create, but also to fundamentally change the processes by which we create, including programming."
In turn, Kiryu and Square Enix plan to be, as previously mentioned, "aggressive in applying AI and other cutting-edge technologies to both our content development and our publishing functions."
"In the short term, our goal will be to enhance our development productivity and achieve greater sophistication in our marketing efforts," Kiryu continuted. "In the longer term, we hope to leverage those technologies to create new forms of content for consumers, as we believe that technological innovation represents business opportunities. "
On the publishing front, Kiryu reveals the company wants to "enable greater global collaboration and to promote the shift to digital." The team hopes this will allow them to not only gives them the chance to "maximize our sales of new titles, but also to deliver our rich back catalog to more customers and in turn to expand the fan base for our Group’s intellectual properties (IPs)."
There is also a desire to put plans in place to ensure for easier and greater collaboration between the development and publishing teams at Square Enix in hopes this will make its "customers even happier than ever before."
As for Blockchain, Kiryu added that Blockchain entertainment/Web 3.0, AI, and the Cloud are three of Square Enix's main "focus investment fields," and that it is "currently working to modify our organizational structure and optimize our resource allocations to support these efforts."
Square Enix has a big year ahead of it, as fans will soon be able to enjoy Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Final Fantasy XVI's second DLC, Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail, Foamstars, SaGa: Emerald Beyond, and Visions of Mana. While they don't have dates, Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, Dragon Quest XII, and Kingdom Hearts 4 are also on the way in 2024 or beyond.
You can read the full New Year's Letter from Takashi Kiryu here.
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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
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