Japan's Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association (CESA) says 85.8% of the game developers it surveyed use generative AI in their work. The figure comes from the preview edition of the CESA Game Industry Report 2026, released on September 17 as Tokyo Game Show 2026 opened its business days.
CESA also stresses that this is the first time its annual surveys have asked about generative AI at all. That detail matters, because it means there is no official CESA baseline from earlier years to measure growth against.
What the CESA survey actually found
According to CESA, 63.0% of respondents use generative AI routinely in their work, and another 22.8% use it occasionally. Those two groups add up to the 85.8% headline figure.
The remaining answers are small. CESA lists 8.6% as trialing or testing generative AI, 4.8% as never having used it, and 0.7% as having used it before but not anymore.
The report defines generative AI with examples: ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, image-generation services and asset-generation services. CESA's own summary says generative AI is no longer limited to a few early adopters and is becoming widely established in game development.
Who CESA surveyed, and how
The numbers come from CESA's annual "Game Developers' Employment and Career Formation 2026" survey. It ran online from May to August 2026 and collected 1,349 valid responses.
The sample is not limited to working professionals. CESA says it targeted commercial game developers, including producers, directors, engineers, artists, sound creators, game designers, QA testers and executives, plus some educators and students.
CESA does not publish a breakdown of respondents by job role, company size or seniority. The response rate and margin of error are not published either, so the result describes this sample rather than every developer in Japan.
Studios expect productivity gains first
A separate CESA Member Company Survey, run from June to July 2026, asked companies what they expect from generative AI. CESA had 220 member companies at the time, and 48 answered this question.
Productivity and operational efficiency came first, cited by 38 companies. Shorter development periods followed with 30, and lower development and operating costs with 29.
Multilingual support and global expansion drew 24 answers, new forms of expression 22, better content quality 21, and addressing labor shortages 20. Only two companies said they expect no particular benefit.
On safeguards, CESA says the most common practice is human checking, correction and supervision of AI output. Companies also restrict which tools staff may use and avoid using AI output as is.
CESA Managing Director Tsutomu Masuda said the result shows generative AI is being used broadly and steadily in development. He added that rights issues, including copyright, have been raised, and that the industry must balance new technology with rights protection and keep game-making centered on people.
Why the year-over-year comparison does not hold up
A jump from roughly 51% in 2025 to 85.8% in 2026 has been reported, along with a breakdown of which tasks developers used AI for. Neither claim appears in the CESA documents reviewed for this article.
CESA's free release for its 2025 report contains no generative AI usage percentages. The 2026 release states plainly that both surveys are annual, but that this is the first time either asked about generative AI.
The 2026 preview also has no task breakdown, so it does not say whether developers mostly use AI for art, text or code. The CESA preview document contains only the usage frequency chart for developers.
The debate over AI in games continues at the studio level too. Sega confirmed that Crazy Taxi: World Tour used generative AI for background assets, while GTA 6 will not use generative AI in its main game.
When the full report arrives
The preview is a 30-page, non-commercial document handed to press at Tokyo Game Show 2026, where publishers have also been busy with reveals like Xbox's Persona 4 Revival and Wo Long 2 announcements. The show's public days run from September 19 to 21 at Makuhari Messe.
CESA plans to release the full CESA Game Industry Report 2026 in early December 2026. It runs to about 460 pages and costs ¥55,000 in print or on PDF and CD-ROM.
Whether that edition breaks down AI use by task, tool or job role is not published yet. Until then, the only CESA-confirmed figures are the 85.8% usage rate and the member companies' expected benefits.
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