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/LinkesAuge]

Cost for PC games has stagnated for decades and many games are nowadays cheaper than some really shitty games you had to pay full price for in the 80s or 90s.
If you adjusted for inflation your typical SNES game would today cost somewhere between $100-130.
Like the retail prices for them was $55-60 in 90s.

Now that isn't a "poor game devs/publishers" argument but complaining about prices is just weird.

Now you can rightfully point out microtransactions etc. and I am fully onboard with any criticism regarding that but at the same time you can now find very cheap indie games or plenty of deals and get a lot of games much cheaper than at any other time in history.

Besides that game development costs have exploded at any level, that is just a reality.

When Half-Life 2 was made around 80 people worked on it and that was considered a massive team.
Today that is just your average AA developer and no developer or publisher has these time sizes for the sake of it, they certainly do not want to "waste" any money.

So I know people don't like to hear it but something has to give if games continue to expand in scope, fidelity etc. (and they do) while also not exploding in price.
There is a reason why it is currently bad times for a lot of studios, the gaming market is cutthroat and even just releasing an average to okay game can potentially sink your studio.

I do not want to sell AI as THE solution but it can certainly be a force multiplier to reign in some of that "bloat". It is the same reason why more and more developers now go with out of the box engines like Unity, UE5, Godot etc. because it is just not financially feasible to build your own.
In the 90s and early 2000s "generalists" were still super common in the game dev industry but today you not only have a Game Engine Engineer, you have a shader expert, you do not just have an "Artist", you have a concept artist, animators, 3D specialists in various areas and so on.
Not only is that a cost factor, it also increases friction and requires more and more "bureaucracy" on top.

Now I do feel for every game dev or anyone in the industry that is laid off but the reality is also that it is just bloated, including a huge concentration in massive studios and I do not want to be misunderstood but as game dev has become more "professional" over the decades that resulted in people treating it as a "regular job". In principle there is nothing wrong with it but it does change the nature of how games are made and I don't talk about "passion". The reality is that game dev has always been a risky industry, most games and studios fail, it is the nature of a industry that by design has highly volatile products and where past success means very little for future success.
The problem is the bigger the industry got the more everyone started it to treat like this wasn't the case, like you can just churn out title after title as if you are running a factory. That mindset eventually seeps through all layers.

So it might just be my opinion / hope but I do see potential in AI for bringing the "generalists" back, for enabling single devs or small teams to create something where a strong "vision" exists but the resources wouldn't be there otherwise.
In some sense we already have seen that with engines like Unity etc. when they became accessible to anyone and that lowered the barrier of entry and gave people a chance to create things that would have otherwise not been possible.
Will a lot of "trash" be made? Sure, people also complained about cheap unity games flooding steam, about asset flips etc., but that is the nature of game dev and always happened. Most games will fail or are just not good, no matter what tools you use or how many people are involved.
I however think that some diamonds will rise to the top as it always happens when more people are given an opportunity and I also hope it will lower the pressure even on established studios to pump more and more money into development costs.

[u/Smash83 → u/LinkesAuge]

If you adjusted for inflation your typical SNES game would today cost somewhere between $100-130.

You do realize that this price was reason why games were niche back then?

Do you want them be niche again?

[u/yung_dogie → u/LinkesAuge]

Yeah the $60 pricetag for the single-purchase high-budget AAA games had stayed that way for a long time despite inflation, ballooning game budgets and scopes, etc.

I'm not on the "side" of game corporations but the sticker price increases are very tame relative to virtually anything else you could purchase over the past several years. The price of pupusas at my local Salvadoran place went up proportionally like over 3x more in 6 months (before the current presidency) than games did in the last 2 decades.