The Japan Online Game Association (JOGA) has published preliminary results of its annual JOGA Online Game Market Research Report 2026, which indicate that all surveyed companies operating in the online game segment use generative artificial intelligence in their workflows.
According to the study, 100% of respondents confirmed the use of AI tools in one part or another of development and business operations. The most popular service was Google Gemini, used by 94% of companies. This was followed by Anthropic Claude (84%) and GitHub Copilot (76%).
The report's authors clarify that the study pertains exclusively to the online game market — projects operating via the internet regardless of platform. The sample does not include offline games for PC, consoles, or mobile devices, so the results cannot be extrapolated to the entire Japanese gaming industry. Furthermore, JOGA has not yet disclosed the number of companies that participated in the survey.
Compared to last year, AI usage has changed significantly. In the 2025 report, ChatGPT was the most popular tool with a 59% adoption rate, and content creation and planning were cited as the primary application areas. Now, companies are increasingly viewing generative AI as a data analysis tool: the most in-demand tasks have become studying user preferences and predicting player behavior.
Major gaming companies continue to adopt different approaches to using the technology. Capcom previously stated that it does not plan to directly incorporate AI-generated game content into its projects but actively uses generative AI to accelerate internal processes. CD Projekt holds a similar position, emphasizing that games are still created by humans, and AI is only used to improve development efficiency.
At the same time, Nintendo remains one of the few major companies that have openly refused to implement generative AI in their own games. The company attributes this to concerns related to intellectual property and copyright.