The death of AAA gaming...A tale of self-harm.

[RandyT]

I love Nvidia GPUs. But...

For those who may not be paying attention, Nvidia has released pricing for their 5000 series graphics cards.  As expected, those who were hoping for some sanity to return with regard to the pricing of the next generation cards, were naive to the situation surrounding Nvidia.  What they don't take into consideration is Nvidia's obscene pricing for anything AI capable.  They have essentially priced themselves out of the consumer market by making the AI hardware so costly, that in order to protect that market segment from the use of consumer cards to do the same thing, they need to ensure there are no alternatives.  After all, who is going to pay $20,000 for a dedicated AI processing card, which will never be anything other than that, and will be obsolete (see: ASIC crypto boxes and the glut of Tesla cards available for pennies on the dollar) the moment a more capable and less-costly solution arrives, if it were possible to get the same results with a half-dozen $1000 consumer GPUs.  Especially since those will retain value on the secondary market for the plebs like you and me.

If there wasn't enough reason to detest AI, you can also thank it for the demise of the advancement of AAA gaming.  For whatever reason, AMD has announced that it will no longer pursue the high-end GPU market.  Maybe it's due to the lack of internal expertise in driving the technology, or they may have just realized that it is so costly to produce their designs, again, thanks to Nvidia and AI, and that a GPU lacking the same utility for AI as the competition doesn't have enough value to justify it's pricing requirements.  Regardless, they have turned their attention to the mid-tier and APU offerings, which will essentially turn PC gaming into consoles without the benefits offered by console gaming.  While scalpers, streamers, content creators and rich kids have shown that they don't care about pricing, which has also contributed to these prices, the average consumer has to.  For that reason, AMD will reign into the foreseeable future as the "gamer's GPU" company.  If Nvidia continues to ignore the needs of the PC gaming market in favor of AI, when it falls, I predict that it will fall hard and may not be able to win back the favor of the market it has turned it's back upon.

All of this added to the abysmal economic situations in the west, and the push-back against the injection of so-called "woke" ideologies into games, has resulted in financial hardship and the threat of demise for several AAA studios.  The situation as it is currently would make it seem foolhardy to invest any capital into these companies, as consumers expect new games to not only deliver the experiences they want, but also to be more impressive than older titles.  But few can afford the hardware required to support them, even if they existed in the form they desired.  Fewer customers for the latest and greatest, equates to a smaller market and even higher prices, eg. unsustainable, for those titles.

In a nutshell, I believe that we are currently exiting the era of AAA gaming, thanks to AI and the company which at one time helped to foster it's growth.  Unlike previous gaming crashes, there will still be new games produced by smaller studios.  The tools have become so advanced now that quality 1-developer games are achievable.  But those who limit their gaming to AAA experiences will need to sell a kidney to afford the hardware, and their options are about to become extremely limited.

Anyone disagree?

[pbj]

I bought some really expensive video card awhile back.  It’s hooked up to 1080P monitor and I use that computer to browse eBay and post here.  24GB of ram or some ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---.  Can I somehow use it to make Cindy Crawford deep fakes?