I think what they will try in the long term future is a new setup of graphics generation, the graphics are no longer polygons/textures but based on AI picture data that AI TMUs build an environment and characters from. For now they're going to basically price people out of physical hardware. 

Maybe only the immediately character you're controlling is rendered and a few enemies is rendered locally on your device.

That environment then is effectively "streamed" to your device allowing for what they'll term as "photorealism". If you have a bad internet connection, you'll get environmental artifacts and lag but the main gameplay should still be alright because it's rendered locally. 

But in this scenario, you no longer own the hardware yourself and have to pay essentially for GPU/TMU usage.

Purists will probably have a shit fit, but it will allow things like smartphones even to have games that look photorealistic "enough".

"Finally, I can play photorealistic games on my smartphone!!" Said no one ever

I think GPUs will be hot shit for AI...until they are not anymore, just like it was for cryptos, when ASICs took over.

Graphics generations are basically fucked. PC going this way pretty much is the death knell. Like I said though the upside is a lot of devs are probably secretly relieved. The sooner they can get off this hamster wheel that was running them into the ground, probably the better, now they can basically make PS5 tier games for a long, long time really.

Great! Ps5 has enough tower to make amazing games.

I think what they will try in the long term future is a new setup of graphics generation, the graphics are no longer polygons/textures but based on AI picture data that AI TMUs build an environment and characters from. For now they're going to basically price people out of physical hardware. 

Maybe only the immediately character you're controlling is rendered and a few enemies is rendered locally on your device.

That environment then is effectively "streamed" to your device allowing for what they'll term as "photorealism". If you have a bad internet connection, you'll get environmental artifacts and lag but the main gameplay should still be alright because it's rendered locally. 

But in this scenario, you no longer own the hardware yourself and have to pay essentially for GPU/TMU usage.

Purists will probably have a shit fit, but it will allow things like smartphones even to have games that look photorealistic "enough".

That would be another death blow to PC gaming. The biggest draw of PC gaming is the freedom to spice things up with mods next to cheap sales. The whole PC gaming is affordable spiel comes from cheaper games. Not renting them from the cloud.

Streaming has already been tried on PC and rejected.

And purists won't like the extra lag, streaming artifacts etc.

That would be another death blow to PC gaming. The biggest draw of PC gaming is the freedom to spice things up with mods next to cheap sales. The whole PC gaming is affordable spiel comes from cheaper games. Not renting them from the cloud.

Streaming has already been tried on PC and rejected.

And purists won't like the extra lag, streaming artifacts etc.

The increased prices are coming to consoles as well. Whenever the PC gets screwed over, there is a trickle-down impact to consoles that literally use the same PC technology.

There is just a pricing delay due to supply/contract agreements... But I would expect sticker prices increase by hundreds of dollars for consoles... Perhaps renting from the cloud might one day be the only financially viable option?

PS5 and Switch 2 price will go up this year, no doubt. Not as much though as a new GPU :/

I think people will stick to what they have and publishers will be fine supporting existing hardware. Most of the world is not ready for streaming games, even if it was the only option. Instead a flourishing second hand PC parts market might arise. Game stores might actually survive a bit longer on second hand console sales going up.

A break in the graphics race might not be a bad thing. Heck with money saved on not upgrading, more money for games ;)