you just have to wonder just wtf some of these studios are doing all day. MS and Sony need to send in hall monitors to keep an eye on them. do they even show up to work?
For the past 5 years, unironically, no. Mass wfh clearly isn't conducive to AAA game development.
the rest of the show was pure slop just like sony's. except instead of japanese trash, it's western trash. i find it hilarious how these games put zero effort into cutscenes and storytelling. everything feels like a first person outer worlds spinoff. no originality. just doing the bare minimum to get funding from release starved publishers whose top tier studios are busy jerking each other off.
Everything really is archetypal with no more effort or thought put in. Soulslop, Honkai anime castoffs, horror games featuring some version of zombified flesh monster, artsy and "atmospheric" platformers with a consistent set of artstyles and the exact same color palettes, etc. NotBloodborne, NotBioshock, NotInside, NotLiS, NotRE/Deadspace, and of course, farming sim slop.
If AI doesn't speed up development then AAA industry is doomed. Taking better part of a decade to make a single game with astronomical budgets means a failure will without a doubt lead to a studio closer.
In order to assess how much AI will help things, we need to understand what exactly the problem is with current AAA game development.
1. Technologically, we're in an awkward space. Devs are spending this gen reacquainting themselves with real time rendering as opposed to LOD pipelines. It's not an insignificant leap to make - though with the sheer mass of people and tools available, you would expect things to be better.
We also have every other dev falling on UE5, which doesn't seem to be the godsend it should be compared to a proprietary engine. Probably UE6 will be better, and I have to imagine that a lot of studios are looking for ways to make a custom engine by the time next gen gets rolling.
2. Terrible studio/project management. Sony is most emblematic of this right now, but Microsoft only appears to have gotten through it now by virtue of buying up half the industry; and the large AAA publishers as a whole have this problem.
On the PS studios front, Jim Ryan and Hermen Hulst created an atmosphere where the hackjobs took the baton. Every major studio save for SSM that should have never been put on live service projects wasted 3-5 years on them. That has an impact on personnel, resources and logistics.
ND was egregious.
SlimySnake
was right to point out that Druckmann should've never have been allowed to be co-studio head, AND creative director/writer on the new IP, AND be a writer/director/consultant for the HBO show. I was never a Neil hater, but if the man wants to scrub Hollywood sacks, then he should do that and gtfo of making games and messing up Sony's premier studio. How a man can have as much experience as he does in the industry and have to be told that a live service would subsume the studio only makes sense if he was ridiculously careless, narcissistic, and/or distracted.
Microsoft is bearing the fruits of trudging through a gen of gestating projects - the glut of games we've had recently literally started dev in the late years of Gen 8. Many that we still don't have did as well; Fable and Perfect Dark in particular.
On the third party front, I think WB and Square Enix are great examples.
The former imploded because the C-suite didn't have the nuts to tell their employees that they didn't want them making doomed attempts at new IP when they had the WB treasure trove of licenses on deck for ZERO extra cost. The latter still hasn't figured out what projects to green light, who to put them on and how to run an efficient ship. KH4 and an Automata follow up are taking too long. BD3 should never have been given FF16. It was probably a mistake to get the best guys at the company to dedicate a decade of their remaining time there to remaking an overexposed game in FF7. The games might be good, but it's not setting up a good long term foundation for SE's future to repeatedly mine 30 year old titles.
3. A tainted workforce pool. DEI is the reverse-normie easy answer, and it does have an impact. I recall Sam Magg's account of her time at Insomniac for example. But there are larger things that are perhaps the egg to that chicken.
- California being the cultural center of the western games industry for the obvious reasons
- A huge number of senior devs who've been around since the 90s and 00s that just want to coast with their big salaries and asspats from brown nosers like Geoff Keighley, Greg Miller and other assorted shills
- The unconditional support of the media whose upper echelon (ie Jason Schreier) has an ultimately socialist/commie agenda to push
All of these things mix together to create layers of dev studios that ascribe to bureaucratic and bloated organizational structures and workflows, toxically positive cultures and an obsession for the "work-life balance" of a normal 9-5er with the entitlement for the notoriety and access of American entertainment luminaries.
AI can directly solve #1, 2 and 3 are messier. It'll take some new blood from the execs down to the studios, and both a clear understanding of what's happening and decisive action from management.
The fact is that last time Sony reported it, actual game sales were down by 16% this gen compared to last. Despite more games than ever coming to PS (and other platforms too) every year. That's a problem that will only get worse if things keep up like this.
), all of that ofc while being faithful 
), so they made smaller spin-off titles like Nightreign, it's more like a safe bet for companies to continue seeing consistent growth while at the same time, if it failed, it won't impact their company that much. He's essentially making a C team at From Software.
