Japan’s Online Game Association and Kadokawa ASCII Laboratories published the JOGA Online Game Market Research Report 2026 on July 10. Conducted annually every year since 2004, the survey offers insight into the state of the domestic online game market and corporate trends among Japanese developers.
The 2026 edition also investigates developers’ and gamers’ attitudes towards generative AI. According to a preview of the report published by Famitsu, the survey revealed a 100% adoption rate for gen-AI tools among game companies. The most widely used model was Google’s Gemini (94%), followed by Anthropic’s Claude (84%) and GitHub Copilot (76%). The tasks companies were most eager to delegate to generative AI tools were “user preference analysis” and user “behavior prediction.”
As an aside, in the previous year’s survey, “content planning” was the top cited use alongside user analysis, while the most used AI tool was OpenAI’s ChatGPT at a 59% utilization rate.
Going back to the 2026 report, despite the high adoption of AI among developers, players’ most frequently voiced concerns about the technology were reportedly potential copyright infringement in games as well as the possibility of “all games starting to look alike.”
While the data from these surveys applies strictly to the online game market, Japanese companies in the content industry seem to be adopting AI at an increasing pace. A survey published by the Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association (CESA) in September last year found that 51% of Japanese game companies were using AI in some capacity, with the top two most common uses being creative (generation of visual assets and images, followed by story and text generation). Additionally, a more recent survey of Japanese creative professionals working in the corporate world showed that 59% of companies used AI, and out of them, 71.4% did not actively disclose the fact.
