Sony says 'efficient' AI tools will lead to even more games flooding the market

At Tokyo's earnings briefing, Totoki cited internal metrics showing AI tools have shortened development cycles by 35 per cent and cut market-entry costs for small studios by 40 per cent. By contrast, daily submissions to the PlayStation Store have risen from 220 a year ago to 510 today.

Sony plans to launch an AI-driven recommendation engine, 'PlayStation Curator', for players in the autumn. Totoki said the budget of the 'GameStream Indie' programme for managing relationships with independent studios had been increased by a third.

Goldman Sachs analyst Masaru Sugiyama said the 'game flood' scenario was hitting even the largest publishers and could compress margins over the long term. Tencent and Microsoft Xbox are running similar experiments. The European Commission is preparing a binding rule draft on labelling games produced with AI.