The Business: It's Not All Bad For The Collapse

Bad News

Good News

Now, combine the two.

The pressure on Vidya studios will force them back into the $20 Game space.

There is more to that pressure than just all the AI companies sucking up all the hardware for their expansion. The other pressure is the back catalog available for sale, much of which has far more generous hardware requirements than the titles at full AAA retail, and more people will do as I do and not even look at any new release unless it's on sale and content-complete.

Live Service? Goat-fucked. That's the sector that will crash first and hard, and I expect it will reduce to the dominant Network Effect holders in each niche (Fortnite, World of Warcraft, League of Legends/DOTA2, etc.) and it will not care about flushing out crap (Warzone) and gold (ARC Raiders) alike. The already shaking MMORPG scene will freefall down to WOW, FF14, and (maybe) Guild Wars 2. All in-development titles should be expected to be cancelled and shut down if they don't launch and hit next year- looking at you, Ashes of Creation.

Western AAA Slop? Craters, then rebuilds around AI-powered workflows, and relaunches; give it to 2030.

Eastern AAA? Will hold out for a few years, then go through the same cycle as they are forced to catch up and tech up to survive. The ChiComs will move first, forcing South Korea and Japan to follow or get left behind and eaten.

Indie, quite frankly, need to scale down or die. The $20 price point has been a known things for years; this is just going to force Normies to notice.

Oh, and don't expect a bubble sitaution here; AI is a National Security priority for every state that has the capacity to execute on it, so there is no bubble.