Smash Bros. and Kirby creator Masahiro Sakurai warned in October that AI will speed up the flood of games on digital stores. He made the comments in an interview with Denfaminicogamer, which Kotaku and Shacknews reported on October 20.
"Although 19,000 titles is a lot, I think that number will only grow from now on, because AI will be used to turn them out. Most of them will end up unplayable," Sakurai said, in the English translation carried by Kotaku and Shacknews.
He set that against about 275 Steam releases a year in 2010, when the Tokyo Game Show design award he judges began. This year's award was the last.
Sakurai named Librarian and its imitators, such as Supermarket Chaos and Needle in a Haystack Simulator, as designs that are easy to clone. He added that AI could copy the atmosphere of Fumito Ueda's ICO or Shadow of the Colossus, but not "whatever Ueda himself will create in the future."
Kotaku framed his argument as a call for originality, without which gaming slowly dies. The interview spread widely on October 21, during Steam Next Fest.
Shigeru Miyamoto took a more reflective view. At a press conference on October 22 for his Order of Culture honor, he separated "creating" from "working," Kotaku reported.
Miyamoto suggested that AI taking over work could prompt people to rethink what creating means, and said there is still a lot left for humans to do. His comments were trending on X on October 26.
Why it matters: both designers shape how developers and players see the craft. Sakurai describes a store problem that is already visible: volume is easy, while originality and quality aren't. Miyamoto leaves room for AI as a tool, as long as human creative intent stays at the center. Both move the debate toward what makes a game worth playing, not whether AI should be used.
The next measure of Sakurai's warning is the store count itself, which he expects to keep rising beyond 19,000 titles.
