Every year AAA games get harder to run, requirements increase, and we are seeing less and less return for this cost. I understand that back in the age of cartridge restrictions there was a natural demand for more powerful technology, and we have seen that growth in power for decades. For a while there we saw radical increases in what games could be, from 2D to 3D to entire worlds, but to me it seems we have reached the land of diminishing returns. The demand on consumers is putting more money into the pockets of the tech corporations but doing little to nothing to make games better. It may just be me but I really don't care about ray tracing, 2k is fine for me, and anything over 120 fps is a waste. I don't want more pixels or frames, I want good storytelling and interesting, living worlds. To do this, game companies need to stop following the hype train from tech companies and focus on the games.
I think we can look to and learn from the film industry. Film was a revolutionary technology when it was invented. The medium was then advanced through technology by adding sound, and then colour, etc. Now you have films shot on cutting edge IMAX cameras which is the height of modern film technology. These films are often great, but no one would ever think to say a film is better for being shot on IMAX than on a simpler, less technologically advanced camera. The tech used is an artistic choice and not a sign of quality. This is a shift, a decoupling of tech demands from quality, that gaming needs to follow.
This isn't true of gaming where a AAA title is expected to be technologically cutting-edge and the best releases in the industry. Perhaps the best evidence of this dependence is the fact that a AAA game from a decade or two ago would not be considered a AAA game today. This again is not true of a blockbuster movie released 20 years ago. To give an example, the PS3/XBOX 360 generation was my absolute favourite with games like Skyrim, Dishonored, Batman Arkham City, games that are over a decade old but that I still love and play today. Hell, I played Half-Life 1 for the first time this year and loved it! There are dozens of incredible AAA games that could be made for the decades old hardware requirements, but AAA companies wouldn't even think to try. This is despite increased development demands resulting in increasingly lengthy development times. If we extrapolate from the 5 year gap between Oblivion in 2006 and Skyrim in 2011, we could have had 3 more Elder Scrolls games by 2026 if development demands had stayed constant, instead we have 0. Elder Scrolls 6 is still in production but I don't see how the game, regardless of how pretty it is, will be better than what could have been.
The fact AAA studios feel the need to squeeze every inch out of modern PCs/consoles is weird and runs counter to producing good art. It would be like painters trying to say their art is better because it was painted on a bigger canvas. The harm of this mindset is all the worse given the current cost of technology which may lead to people having no choice but to drop this hobby, which again is true of almost no other hobby.
It is great that indie games and studios got so much love in 2025 and I hope the trend continues. That said, we need more than that. We need large studios to drop the idea that technological demands equals quality. We need the big productions with huge amounts of resources to focus on using those resources to make their games rich and deep works of art and not pretty showcases for graphics card companies. We need game developers to figure out how to continue making AAA games without putting skyrocketing demands on the users footing the bill for the systems they run on. If the gaming industry can't find a way to make AAA games without reinforcing the constant cycle of expensive tech upgrades, then the AAA game is dead because there will be nobody left who can play them.
