Sony and Bandai Namco announce generative AI collaboration to find how the tech can “effectively contribute to realising a creator’s vision”

Sony and Bandai Namco have announced a “collaborative initiative” focused on AI and the latest technologies can aid game development.

In a Sony corporate strategy presentation and earnings announcement (per Variety, who first reported the below quotes), coinciding with its 2025/2026 fiscal report, Sony Group president and CEO Hiroki Totoki emphasised that “human creativity must remain at the center,” and that the technology is not “a replacement for artists or creators. It is an amplifier of human imagination and [a] catalyst for new possibilities.”

In the name of this creator-focused AI exploratory expedition, Totoki announced a “collaborative pilot” with Bandai Namco that’s focused on gen AI as well as “future technologies”.

“Through this exploration, we have identified massive gains in speed and productivity per person, as well as how to concretely address the shortcomings of generative AI based on the understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the models,” Hiroki said. He pointed to a lack of consistency as an example of generative AI’s shortcomings, but says the company has accumulated knowledge and expertise in order to bypass this problem by utilising various models and fine tuning to ” consistently generate output of intended style with accuracy and cost.”

Hideaki Nishino , CEO of Sony Entertainment, then took the floor. He reaffirmed that Sony’s goal is “always to be the best place to play and the best place to publish”, and that the company sees “AI as a powerful tool to help us in this mission.”

Nishino would go on to explain how generative AI is being pushed internally at Sony, being used to automate repetitive workflows, improving productivity, and accelerating quality assurance. He then pointed to one tool being used – Mockingbird – which generates facial animations from captured performance data in substantially less time than required without the tech. Nishino pointed to Naughty Dog (The Last of Us) and San Diego Studio (MLB The Show 2026) as developers using the tool, including on released games.

Nishino also revealed that AI-powered payment tools have generated over $700m in incremental revenues over the past few years by efficiently directing payments. Ai has also driven visual fidelity improvements according to Nishino, who claims the machine learning-powered PlayStation’s Spectral Super Resolution has been used on the PS5 Pro, to the benefit of recent releases like Saros and Ghost of Yotei.

Going forward, Nishino claims the company is looking to build upon work done so far with machine learning technology projects aimed at personalisation, hoping to build a tool that could recommend to players the next game they would enjoy, or accessory they’d like to buy. He notes that with the decrease in barriers to game development AI could cause, the platform’s curation and recommendation will become more important.

This announcement came alongside a predicted PS5 sales decrease from Sony as part of their 2026/2027 fiscal forecast, caused by memory shortages brought on by the generative AI boom. The company has not decided on a PS6 release date or price yet, and may even “change business models” due to this memory shortage crisis. Nonetheless, the company is clearly bullish on the technology, patenting an AI ghost who can play games for you earlier this year.