Bandai Namco Announces ClipSearch

Bandai Namco Announces ClipSearch: AI-Powered Game Video Search Tool Developed with Google’s Technology

Global entertainment giant Bandai Namco has unveiled “ClipSearch,” a revolutionary game video search tool developed using Google’s AI technology. This breakthrough innovation allows players to accurately retrieve specific game video content by simply using screenshots or character dialogue lines, fundamentally transforming the digital entertainment content retrieval experience.

Core Technology: Cross-Modal AI in Practical Application
Leveraging Google’s advanced AI visual-language cross-modal learning model, ClipSearch achieves the following groundbreaking capabilities:

• Search by Image: Users can upload any game scene screenshot, and the system automatically identifies visual elements (characters, environments, items, etc.), matching similar video clips from a massive database in milliseconds.
• Dialogue Retrieval: Inputting character dialogue text directly jumps to the corresponding scene timestamp, supporting cross-language dialogue search.
• Dynamic Content Analysis: Going beyond static images, it intelligently analyzes complex content such as dynamic combat scenes and cutscales in videos.

Development Background: Strategic Upgrade of Digital Asset Management
Bandai Namco revealed that this technology is a core component of its “Game Archive 2025” digital strategy. With over 40 years of development history, the company has accumulated more than 2,000 games and over 100,000 hours of video material, making traditional retrieval methods inadequate for modern development needs. Internal tests showed that ClipSearch improves concept art retrieval efficiency by 300% and reduces voiceover dialogue verification time by 85%.

Future Plans: AI-Driven Entertainment Development Ecosystem
Bandai Namco CTO Hajime Nakatani stated, “ClipSearch is not just a retrieval tool but foundational infrastructure for future game development. We plan to achieve three major goals within three years:

• Build the world’s largest game video knowledge graph, covering all works from 1985 to the present.
• Open API interfaces to third-party developers to foster industry-wide collaborative innovation.
• Collaborate with Google Cloud to develop a real-time game assistance system, allowing players to access guides and story details seamlessly during gameplay.”

Industry Impact: Redefining IP Value Extraction
This technology significantly enhances the efficiency of revisiting classic IPs. For example:

• Quickly locating all appearances of “Jun Kazama” across the entire Tekken series for remastered editions.
• Automatically aggregating Easter egg scenes from all Pac-Man iterations for metaverse content creation.
• Real-time analysis of the most rewatched story segments in the Tales series to guide new script development.

Industry analysts believe this technology will reshape game content production workflows, potentially shortening Bandai Namco’s new game development cycles by 30%, particularly benefiting efficient remodeling and cross-media development of classic IPs.

ClipSearch is already deployed within Bandai Namco’s internal development systems, with an enterprise version expected to be available to strategic partners by 2025. The company also announced plans to invest $120 million over the next three years to expand its AI R&D center, focusing on cutting-edge fields such as game neural network training and cross-generational IP digital preservation.