This article was originally published on January 9, 2026 - read the full issue

By Rob Fahey

Predicting what lies ahead for the videogame business has always been risky – never more so than in the current climate, in which black swans seem to have started travelling in packs. If your bingo card for 2025 predicted events such as EA being taken private by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, Valve planning an assault on the home console market, or the world going head over heels for a French turn-based RPG, I'd very much like you to pick my lottery numbers next week.

Even if we must accept that the only true inevitability for 2026 is more surprises from unexpected quarters, we can start to sketch out some broad strokes for the industry in the next 12 months. After all, there are major debates that simply roll over from last year – the use of generative AI in development being a good example of one that's only going to become more contentious in the months to come.

2025 saw some opening skirmishes, but with game development being targeted by major AI firms as a potential PR triumph at a time when overall commercial adoption is going far more slowly than they'd hoped, things are likely to get very heated indeed this year. Expect to see a coordinated effort to present generative AI use to the public as a fait accompli, not just for brainstorming or playing with concepts but for final in-game assets – followed by some world-class displays of self-pity when that inevitably provokes targeted backlash and boycotts.

AI is likely to play an indirect role in a lot of the trends shaping the industry in the coming year, in fact. Whether the widely predicted burst of the AI bubble happens this year or not – and whether it's a devastating collapse or a more managed release of hot air – the way that generative-AI projects have pulled in such a vast proportion of available seed funding recently has already had a massive impact on games, which will be felt for years.

Late last year, new headwinds started to blow from the AI sector into the videogame business; deals to build literally trillions of dollars' worth of AI data centres started to send hardware component prices skyrocketing, especially memory and storage. It's now hard to imagine any circumstance in which consoles might finally see a price cut in 2026, and Valve's otherwise brilliantly positioned Steam Machine will also have very limited room to manoeuvre on price – to say nothing of the grim financial reality facing any PC owner considering a hardware upgrade right now.

While soaring component prices are a headache for Valve as it gears up to launch its streamlined PC, it may play into the company's hands in another respect. Gabe Newell and co have spent years quietly but steadily working on turning Linux into a credible alternative to Windows as a gaming OS. Microsoft's approach will no doubt remain the default gaming OS for most consumers, but Valve's gaming-optimised Linux is a solid choice for those lower-spec systems that just became prohibitively expensive to upgrade. With Steam Machines acting as further proof of concept, this year may see cracks starting to appear in Microsoft's comfortable dominance of PC gaming.

Hardware isn't the only arena where pricing debates are likely to send feathers flying. Wailing and gnashing of teeth over software prices has become background music in recent years, as publishers try to keep pace with inflation and rising development costs even as many consumers are seriously financially squeezed. Price rises are never popular, but testing the waters at $70 and even $80 for major titles is arguably more palatable than further forays into aggressive monetisation strategies and the catastrophic stumbles of the "any game you want, as long as it's live service" era.

This year may bring the biggest pricing experiment of them all, though. Grand Theft Auto VI is supposedly on track for the end of the year, and while we haven't heard anything about its pricing for a while, it was reported some time ago that Rockstar was musing over testing the psychologically challenging $100 price point. If any game could get away with it, it's GTAVI; whether a series that's no stranger to provoking outrage would be willing to court such controversy over its pricing remains to be seen.

Not to make this all about money, but if we're thinking about how the industry is shaping up this year, it's also worth considering the landscape in terms of game financing, a sector which has remained bleak since the winding down of the pandemic years. The aforementioned firehose of cash that's been pointed at generative-AI projects has been one factor (I know of at least half a dozen games underway right now that managed to wrangle funding with a vaguely defined "it's an existing game genre, but now with AI!" pitch, though how many of them will get as far as a public announcement is unclear). But we've also seeing a clear pendulum swing away from the easy availability of funding in the early years of the pandemic.

2025 might have nudged the pendulum back a little. The success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, as well as other more small-scale titles such as Blue Prince, has ignited a clear interest in finding teams that can deliver small, well-polished games – all the better if they target established but under-served niche audiences. How good investors will actually be at identifying those opportunities (as opposed to just throwing money at a handful more melancholia-tinged turn-based RPGs – not that that's a bad thing) is another question, but there are some green shoots showing in what admittedly largely remains a blasted wasteland for game funding.

If we return to this article in 12 months, no doubt the most striking aspects will be the black swans it didn't see coming – but a year underscored by ongoing concerns over pricing and financing, and buffeted by increasingly vitriolic debates over generative AI, seems like a safe bet for now.

This article was originally published on January 9, 2026 - read the full issue