It's been a rollercoaster day for Crazy Taxi. Today, at Xbox's showcase, we saw the first trailer for the long-teased rebooted game in the series. In a new trailer (below) Sega announced that the game is set to launch on Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X in 2027.

There's a lot to like: the series' San Francisco-inspired map still looks intact, and everything looks as clean and sunny as ever. You play as the original driver, Alex, who takes to the streets alongside some rival drives trying to get the biggest fare. The trailer also showed a few side activities; a fishing mini-game caught my attention the most. I also like the idea of ferrying around someone trying not to spill pizzas out of your open top vehicle.

Crazy Taxi: World Tour | Announcement Trailer Watch on YouTube

But then came the controversy: over on the Steam page for the game, Sega has added a note confirming that it has been using generative AI in the development of the title. "At SEGA Corporation, we utilize generative AI as a support tool for developers, aiming to provide better content to our users and enable developers to focus more on creative tasks," reads the statement. "We have used such generative AI support tools during development of Crazy Taxi: World Tour. No AI was used in reference to the performers in the game."

Sega isn't alone in the industry, of course: there are many studios beginning to embrace genAI (but just as many starting to reject it). There is a lot of player resistance to the tool, though, with consumers rejecting games that use genAI en masse due to its lack of artistry, the environmental implications of its use, and the fact that many genAI models are trained immorally on stolen work from existing artists.

We've known about Crazy Taxi's reboot for a while, of course: at The Game Awards in 2023, Sega announced plans to reboot five of its classic franchises: Golden Axe, Shinobi, Streets of Rage and Jet Set Radio. Whilst most of these series have had a revisit in recent years, a 'super-game' announced at the same time recently got shut down internally at Sega.