Konami Digital Entertainment president Hideki Hayakawa said in the company’s 2026 Integrated Report that AI will not significantly change the game market, even as he acknowledged that it may let almost anyone make games more easily. His comments put a clear line around Konami’s Konami AI market impact stance at a moment when the industry is debating how far AI should reach into development.
Hayakawa’s point is not that AI will stay outside game creation. It is that even if the tool becomes more accessible, the market itself will not move dramatically because of it. That view matters now because the latest financial report is where Konami chose to spell out how it sees the technology, rather than in a marketing pitch or a separate product announcement.
The report frames human creativity as the part Konami still treats as hard to replace. Hayakawa said people from diverse backgrounds exchanging ideas cannot be replaced easily, and he tied that to the way games are made. In his view, that exchange is not a decorative extra. It is the core of how a game becomes distinctive, which is why the company is not presenting AI as a substitute for the people behind its titles.
That stance lands while some game studios are pivoting toward AI-focused development and others are trying to keep generative AI out of releases altogether. Konami has also recently started to reinvest in Metal Gear Solid, Castlevania and Silent Hill after spending a period focused on mobile games and slots, which makes its public view on AI part of a broader reset in how it presents itself as a game company.
There is still a gap in Konami’s position, and it is the practical one. Hayakawa gave a view of the market, not a production roadmap, so the report does not say how much AI Konami plans to use in its own development work, if at all. That leaves the company saying AI may widen access without spelling out whether it expects to lean on it inside the studio or keep it at arm’s length. For now, the message is that Konami sees AI as a tool that may become common, while the creative decisions that shape a game remain human work.
