How Much Longer Can AAA Games Be Sustainable?

[Moonface]

It's not really a secret that development costs for AAA games have skyrocketed in the last decade. Comparatively, game prices have seen a glacial increase, spending multiple generations at $60 until the recent increases to $70 or even $80. In turn, that resulted in DLC and micro-transactions being the main go-to for generating income beyond an initial sale, and that became so lucrative it birthed the GaaS trend that has seen hits like Genshin Impact and one of the industry's most impressive failures in Concord. With increased costs have also come increased development times, which makes sense given bigger games mean more parts to make, but it also means a developer is potentially producing less games to sell; for example, most of Sony's first party studios have gone from producing 4+ games in a single generation to only 1-2.

To me, the AAA scene is pretty bleak when it comes to the financial sustainability of it. I doubt it would result in another game crash, since there are plenty of indie and smaller studios that aren't affected by the bloat of AAA game costs, but I've seen so many stories in just the last two years of AAA game struggles that I don't feel were as common even ten years ago. Maybe that's just down to a difference in what gets reported and/or shared now compared to the past, or maybe I'm misremembering entirely? I don't know.

Anyway, I'm curious what others think about all of this.