Unpopular Opinion

Careful what you wish for. My Bullshit Detector of Doom™ is predicting a push toward cloud gaming rather than optimizing anything.

Which tracks, sadly. Big tech has already hoarded up all the GPUs, RAM, and storage. I always hoped those would eventually trickle down to the secondhand market, either as they refresh hardware or when the stupid AI bubble finally bursts, but since they already have them, it would make sense to repurpose them for gaming and sell you a subscription. Because of course it would be a subscription.

Despite all these challenges and setbacks, Microsoft is still pursuing and pivoting towards cloud gaming and cross-platform gaming, Xbox Game Pass subscription, and is forgoing exclusivity to allow more players to join Xbox’s gaming endeavors, ranging from PCs, handhelds like the Rog Ally and Ally X, mobile devices, and even automobiles.

-- https://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-bets-on-cloud-and-cross-platform-future-for-Xbox-while-brushing-off-30-profit-margin-rumors.1191620.0.html

It won't and here's why...

Game development is done for known quantities, the RAM in an Xbox Series X/S, PS5/Pro, Switch, Steam Deck, now Steam Machine isn't changing. It's a fixed, known quantity, and they code for that.

Storage is a different issue, and can be expanded many ways, but the processors and RAM isn't going anywhere.

If anything, what we're going to see is an extended gaming generation where the Next Gen machines can't be successfully launched or supported.

Nah. AAA game development is going to die. The smaller games won't need the great specs.

and that subsequently the time allowed for QA and optimization has shrunk in order to ship the product quicker

That's definitely an issue and it's becoming worse. But I don't think rising RAM prices will solve it. More likely there will be an even larger split between indie and AAA games and some users will just permanently lose access to AAA because they can't afford the hardware anymore.

There's also a heavy push towards AI supported development, so I would expect a lot of code to get a lot worse.

There's a massive skill erosion in the industry going on currently, at least in the (AAA) company I work in. We've just switched from agile/sprints to "AI-native ", which is a SDLC model that, at least from how I looked into it, doesn't make any sense but "AI go brrrr".

It sucks.

Upvoted for being unpopular.

I mean this would be wonderful but I'm not counting on it. I have given up with the AAA's, there is plenty of wonderful, reasonably priced indie games what will run on a toaster. It's a decision to buy the Good New Games Everyone Wants To Play and to build a strong enough PC to run them.

// EDIT; To add in, isn't the future in cloud-gaming where you no longer own the PC/Laptop or the game? Just subscriptions after subscriptions?

I like the idea. Maybe some other kinds of software could use some optimization as well. Like people who use Electron and Flatpak for their desktop software and now my instant messenger uses 1GB of RAM and pulls in 1.5GB of dependencies on my SSD 😅

Uh huh. Right. I'm sure that's how it's going to turn out. And next thing Elon Musk is personally going to deliver some cookies to all the kids that are starving because of his aid cuts.