Nintendo

Nintendo, founded in Kyoto in 1889 as a playing-card maker, is the most protective IP holder in video games — the company behind Mario, Zelda, and Pokémon, and famously quick to litigate anything that touches its characters. So when the generative-AI wave swept game development, Nintendo’s answer carried weight.

“Value unique to Nintendo”

At the company’s 84th annual shareholders meeting in June 2024, president Shuntaro Furukawa noted that AI-like techniques have always driven game behavior, but drew a line at the new wave: generative AI “can be used in creative ways,” he said, while flagging its intellectual-property problems — and declared that Nintendo, with decades of know-how in crafting gaming experiences, would keep delivering value “unique to Nintendo and cannot be created by technology alone.” The remarks were widely read as a refusal to build its games on generative AI, a stark contrast with rivals like Microsoft and EA racing to adopt it.

The stance is enforcement-minded, too. Furukawa later told investors that whether or not generative AI is involved, anything Nintendo determines infringes its IP will be met with “appropriate” action — a warning aimed at AI tools that can conjure Mario on demand, and of a piece with the design culture built by Shigeru Miyamoto, where hand-crafted play is the product.

Nintendo has left the door ajar — Furukawa says the company remains “flexible” toward technological developments, and machine-learning techniques appear in research contexts like upscaling. But as of 2026, no flagship Nintendo title is known to ship generative-AI content, making the company the most prominent holdout in the industry.