Greentext

Alternative outcomes:

Gaming bifurcates.

Indies and certain AAs aim for the 'good ending', realize fancy graphics are not only harder to produce, but you're actually just shooting yourself in the foot in terms of potential customers.

AAA on the other hand continues to double down and enshittify, figure out new ways to turn gaming into leasing and renting.

... but, as always, mostly marketing, ad campaigns, paying off "journalists" and "influencers".

3rd potential outcome:

Something akin to lan parties/netcafes/arcades recurs.

Rent out a space, run a local to global network solution and also a miniature rendering farm.

All the actual PCs (or maybe VR headsets) are connected to cheap, thin client local machines that are then networked to the mini rendering farm.

4th potential outcome:

... nobody can actually stop people from emulating or running old, good games. 'Piracy' becomes as normalized in many other parts of the world as it is in Russia currently.

Will we really have more performant games? Are game companies going to invest in an opensource game engine to pool their talent and make the most performant game engine out their that makes the most performant games?

It's way more likely they'll try and sell us yet another SaaS product or even better, an AI product that guzzles a cubic metre per request.

plays another 2,000 hours of dwarf fortress

Here's my conspiracy theory; as local gen ai is closing in on cloudmodels even on modest gaming hardware they need to phase it out to make subscriptions pay. So they buy more hardware than they need to make local a nonviable way

I mean, if all new gaming becomes cloud based shit I'm just going to be playing old games on emulators forever, or at least as long as my computer functions. And then when that fails, I'll go back to analog enjoyments.

My view about this shortage is european company won't be able to take back their data from US Cloud.

Cloud gaming is effectively impossible due to little things like the speed of light. Sure, you could play Civilization via cloud but good fucking luck with competitive shooters.

Secret ending: you keep playing the huge selection of games we already have, endlessly, forgetting games you played a while ago as you restart one you already forgot.

Edit: currently playing Warhammer 40k: Space Marine. So far it's really fun. It's as if you're playing Doom as a more normal guy.

I suspect people will just keep their existing equipment running for as long as possible, and secondhand equipment will be worth almost as much as it was when new.

This won't last forever.

The first ending has already been happening.

The second ending keeps failing to happen. We've got graveyards full of Cloud Gaming markets. Google Stadia, OnLive, Walmart's cloud service LiquidSky, and various smaller platforms like Vectordash and Bifrost.

SSD prices really pisses me off. I use those for work as an independent and regularly need new ones, and the ones I usually get have gone up like crazy!

I need the other stuff for work too but for now my rig is chugging along so I'm not feeling that yet.

devs are not in control of pc optimization, it is their bosses. plus idont think this ai thing is gonna write fast code...

Unless you're really chasing the big name games, you don't need that high powered of a rig anymore. Stylized graphics are better than highly realistic, they hold up better and longer. The most intensive game I have bought is STALKER 2 and even then my rig is holding up fine.

Wirth's Law

The other good ending: People learn to disassemble e-waste and reuse stuff instead of throwing them in the trash. Think of all the SSDs, HDDs, and RAM sticks that are thrown out in old laptops and gaming consoles. It would be great to bring more of a reuse, repair, Maguyver, culture back to electronics.

If I can’t play games I might have to get into politics to amuse myself. The trick is to get others to foot the bill for your hobby.

Worst ending: Devs continue chasing higher graphical settings, consoles continue to release but at much higher price points to cover these costs. Cloud gaming also becomes much more expensive to afford the infrastructure. Gaming becomes less accessible to everyone except the wealthy.

They are going to make PC out of reach for common folk and force us to pay a monthly subscription for computing power.

If those Devs could read low level they'd be very upset

4th ending: The AI bubble bursts,AI companies goes bankrupt and RAM,SSD,Gpu and Consoles plummet to normal prices due to the companies selling their stuff.
5th ending: People move on to used/older PCS and Consoles.
6th Ending: People move on to older/simpler Open source/reverse engineered games that runs on Potato hardware.

3rd ending: Retro gaming makes a massive comeback.