In CESA’s preliminary 2026 questionnaire, 85.8% of 1,349 individual respondents in Japan said they used generative AI at work. That is strong evidence of widespread reported use among those who answered, not proof that nearly every Japanese game developer or studio has adopted AI.
What CESA’s 2026 result says
The Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association (CESA) collected 1,349 individual online responses from May through August 2026. In preliminary results reported by ExtremeTech via Yahoo Tech, 85.8% of respondents indicated some generative-AI use in their work. The figure describes respondents, not a census of Japan’s game-development workforce.
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Use was often reported as frequent: 63% of respondents said they used generative AI daily, while a further 22.8% said they used it occasionally, according to the same coverage of CESA’s preliminary results. Those categories make the finding more informative than a single adoption headline, but they still do not reveal what tasks people use AI for.
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The questionnaire asked individuals, and its preview does not establish that the respondents form a representative probability sample of the entire workforce. Nor does the available coverage break use down by activity: it does not show whether respondents use AI for coding, brainstorming, art, operations, or something else. It therefore cannot establish that AI-generated assets are appearing in released games.
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The 2026 findings are preliminary. The coverage said the full CESA report was expected in early December 2026; detailed methodology and definitions should be checked against that report when available.
Why the 2025 comparison is not a clean year-over-year measure
The same coverage puts the 2026 result alongside a 51% figure from CESA’s 2025 survey. But the 2025 survey asked companies, while the 2026 questionnaire asked individual respondents. Because the units differ, the two percentages do not measure a controlled change in the same population. Treat them as separate survey findings, not a precise one-year adoption jump.
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A separate 100% finding covers online-game companies
A different survey preview reported that 100% of the online-game companies covered in the annual JOGA/Kadokawa ASCII Laboratories market survey used generative AI. The preview, reported by Regen Raygun, also listed Gemini at 94%, Claude at 84%, and GitHub Copilot at 76%. These are separate results for surveyed online-game companies, not a second measure of all Japanese game developers; they should not be combined with CESA’s individual-response percentage.
Adoption is not proof of productivity gains or consistent oversight
CESA’s preliminary coverage says respondents expected benefits such as improved efficiency and productivity, shorter production cycles, and lower costs. Those are expectations, not audited or causally demonstrated results. The same coverage mentions human review and correction of AI output, but the preview does not give enough detail to assess how consistently that happens.
Just under 9% of respondents said their employers had implemented guidance on AI use, according to the CESA results coverage. The preview does not establish the guidance’s scope or provide enough detail about definitions and denominators to draw broader conclusions about workplace policy.
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“Pretty much all-in” captures how common workplace use was among CESA’s respondents, including the large share reporting daily use. It goes too far if read as a claim about every developer or studio in Japan. The preliminary material leaves key questions open: who the respondents represent, which tasks they use AI for, how often particular tools are used beyond the reported frequency categories, and whether AI delivers the benefits respondents expect.
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