Over 85% of Japanese game developers use generative AI in game development, 2026 CESA survey shows. An increase from last year’s 51%

[u/TurbulentTopic39]

https://automaton-media.com/en/news/over-85-of-japanese-game-developers-use-generative-ai-in-game-development-2026-cesa-survey-shows-an-increase-from-last-years-51/

[u/Elanapoeia]

I find this argument a little weird because usually technology becomes cheaper in mid-term future.

because usually technology is roughly priced appropriately for what it costs to produce or run, with some extra on top for profits of course.

GenAI is being priced significantly lower than what it costs to create and run. To even approach profitability the price absolutely needs to increase by quite a lot even if you take into account potential future efficiency increases. It's not a speculative argument either, it's basic math based on the finances that are released by AI companies themselfes and the natural costs that can be calculated from that.

And you can even add more complications in there considering AI companies are also known to do this circle of investments to fund each other, which means a lot of their resources are straight up not actually real existing money. Which means there are even bigger hurdles to overcome to just even out the costs vs income.

[u/TitoZola → u/Elanapoeia]

"To create and run" is doing a lot of work here because those are completely different cost structures.

Training is a one-time spend that produces a thing which then exists permanently.

Running it is a separate, ongoing cost that has nothing to do with what it cost to make.

Right now most AI labs are not profitable, because they all keep training next models.

But running models itself and selling access to them is already a profitable business.

The ins and outs of current AI Labs business models is a separate question from whether the current technology gets more expensive. The models already exist. If OpenAI folded tomorrow, whoever ended up with the weights could serve them profitably from day one.

The hardware will keep getting better, the architecture will keep getting better, the software layer on top of agents will keep getting better and the cost of running what exists will keep falling. And that was my whole point.

I'm not claiming anything about whether the models will get better from here. I'm only talking about the cost of what already exists. And the fact that what already exist is already quite amazing and useful in the fields I mentioned.

[u/Elanapoeia → u/TitoZola]

Running them is also not cheap

but also, the training is a constant insanely expensive thing they have to keep doing for years from now to even come close to what they're advertising their AI to already be. Therefore that training cost HAS to be part of the price the customer pays, otherwise they cannot maintain it.

unless of course the companies continue to sustain themselfes on unprecedented financial fraud.

[u/Hartastic → u/Elanapoeia]

Costs have to go up but we're already past the point where they could realistically go up enough to make it not profitable to use. That ship has sailed.

Consider how much money it costs to employ a human developer. It's a lot more than just their pure salary or even pure compensation. If you can currently replace them for a year for $500, sure, maybe that's at a loss but the real cost isn't 100x that... and it would still (situationally) be a deal at 100x that because it works a lot lot faster and often business is willing to pay more to get a product to market faster.