Ken Kutaragi, who left Sony in 2007 and now teaches at the University of Electro-Communications while working in AI, told 4Gamer that the games industry has stalled and that AI-generated entertainment could become the next medium. He expects real-time AI video and music generation to match today's console performance around 2028 to 2029, and framed the market's ceiling as moving from 30 trillion yen to 3,000 trillion yen. Several outlets noted the prediction aligns with his position in the AI industry.
一、"The Games Industry Has Stalled"
Kutaragi led the development of the original PlayStation, the PS2 and the PS3, left Sony in 2007, and now holds a specially appointed professorship at the University of Electro-Communications while working in artificial intelligence. His line from the interview: the moment you lose your curiosity, and start believing that things are about as good as they are going to get, is the moment it is all over.
That is a heavy claim, and he is not just venting. His evidence is development cost. He recalls that Battle Arena Toshinden on the original PlayStation was built by a team of fewer than ten people in about three months. Today's studios are vastly larger, while the gains in visual fidelity have visibly flattened.
His Real Target Is Risk Aversion
His complaint is not about technology but about mindset. He argues developers now gravitate toward the safe option, whereas the early PlayStation crew set out to change the world. When the best people in an industry all pick the lowest-risk path, innovation stops.
That diagnosis is worth more attention than the forecast. The 2026 console market supplies the footnote: rising hardware prices, a 13-year low in US August sales, and three platform holders passing component costs straight to players. In that climate, fewer people than ever can afford to bet on a new medium.
二、2028 to 2029: Real-Time AI Catching Up to Consoles
His timetable: research into real-time AI video and music generation is advancing, and that technology should reach the performance of current game consoles around 2028 to 2029.
He Does Not Treat the 3,000 Trillion Yen Figure as a Conclusion
Going from 30 trillion to 3,000 trillion yen is a hundredfold gap. One thing needs to be stated clearly first: in his framing, that number is a hypothetical, not a confirmed market forecast and not a published industry report from any research firm. Chinese outlets that relayed the interview flagged the same caveat.
The informative part is his chain of reasoning. If AI can generate video, music and dialogue in real time, then conversation and imagination can themselves become content. At that point, the boundary between games, interactive media and AI-generated experience blurs past usefulness, and the word "game" may simply not cover it. I think the logic holds. The "100x" should be read as rhetoric, not as a figure you would put in a business plan.
三、How Much Should You Believe: He Works in AI
When the Russian outlet Playground republished the interview, it added a note: Kutaragi currently works in the AI industry, his career is tied to the prospects of that technology, and his predictions should be weighed with that in mind.
That caution is fair, but it is not disqualifying. A person who correctly bet on the 32-bit console window in 1994 deserves to be taken seriously on timing. And a person currently building AI has an obvious interest in saying AI will rebuild entertainment. Both things can be true at once.
A simple test for predictions like this one: separate technical feasibility from commercial inevitability. Real-time AI generation will almost certainly be technically viable within a few years. Whether it necessarily replaces the existing games business depends on distribution, payment rails and content moderation — not on how fast a model runs.
四、What He Actually Gets Right
The Track Record
Kutaragi's most famous call was not about AI. He reasoned from the cadence of semiconductor progress that a 32-bit console had to arrive in the second half of 1994, and used that prediction to drive the entire PlayStation project. His real skill is translating shifts in the supply chain into product timing.
Read today's remarks through that frame and the question changes. It is not whether AI replaces games, but who defines the next rhythm. Once content can be generated in real time by a model, whoever controls compute and distribution controls pricing power. That means very different things for console makers, for gacha studios and for independent developers.
One more thing worth carrying over: in the same series of talks he told young creators not to lose their curiosity, and argued the games industry does not follow the world's most advanced technology — it creates it. That sounds like a platitude until you place it in a year of price hikes, falling sales and steady layoffs. Long-horizon tracking of this beat is maintained at gghubs.com.
五、FAQ
Who is Ken Kutaragi?
Ken Kutaragi is the primary driving force behind the original PlayStation, the PS2 and the PS3, widely known as the father of the PlayStation. He left Sony in 2007 and is now a specially appointed professor at the University of Electro-Communications in Japan, active in artificial intelligence. His views appear regularly in interviews with the Japanese outlet 4Gamer.
Will AI really replace video games?
Not in the near term. His stated timeline is that real-time AI video and music generation reaches today's console performance around 2028 to 2029, which remains a prediction rather than a confirmed technology launch. The more realistic path is AI generation folding into existing production pipelines rather than replacing the whole chain at once.
Is the 3,000 trillion yen figure an official forecast?
No. It is a hypothetical Kutaragi offered in an interview, set against a global games market currently above 30 trillion yen. It is not a published market forecast from any research organization and should be labeled as one person's speculation when cited. Fact-checking and sourcing on this beat stay on GameHub's gaming news desk.