PlayStation CEO Hermen Hulst was featured in an interview published today on the BBC’s website. As you might recall, Hulst was the managing director of Guerrilla Games (Killzone, Horizon) for eighteen years. Following the success enjoyed with Horizon: Zero Dawn, Hulst was promoted to head of PlayStation Worldwide Studios in November 2019, succeeding Shuhei Yoshida (who, as we learned last week, will be leaving Sony Interactive Entertainment early next year).
Earlier this year, following Jim Ryan’s departure, Hulst got another promotion and became the new co-CEO of the entire PlayStation business alongside Hideaki Nishino. Hulst is handling the Studio Business Group and is, therefore, closer to the game development side, which makes sense given his background, while Nishino handles the Platform Business Group.
In the aforementioned interview, the executive was asked one of the most important questions in most industries: what kind of impact will generative AI have? When it comes to game development, Hulst believes there will have to be a balance between maintaining the human touch and leveraging the opportunities enabled by generative AI technologies.
I suspect there will be a dual demand in gaming: one for AI-driven innovative experiences and another for handcrafted, thoughtful content. Striking the right balance between leveraging AI and preserving the human touch will be crucial.
That’s probably a safe approach in most cases with generative AI. So far, PlayStation hasn’t announced any specific initiative to implement gen AI into its own games, but that doesn’t mean they are not researching it. Microsoft’s Xbox, on the other hand, has partnered with leading startup Inworld AI to create Narrative Graph, a tool that game developers can use to generate a branching graph of the narrative alongside character profiles and their knowledge. It may be a while before we see actual triple-A games shipping with the technology, though.
The PlayStation CEO of Studio Business Group also talked about the ongoing goal of bringing game franchises to the big and small screen through PlayStation Productions and its partners. Hulst said:
I am hoping to raise the PlayStation IP outside of just the gaming category and elevate it so it sits comfortably within the larger entertainment industry.
So far, Sony has released two feature films (Uncharted and Gran Turismo) and two TV series (The Last of Us and Twisted Metal), with many more on the way, such as Until Dawn, Ghost of Tsushima, Days Gone, Gravity Rush, God of War, and of course the sequels to Uncharted and The Last of Us.