The Steam Deck iirc is sold below cost and seems to have been a reasonable success.
The market for consoles would still exist. It would just be that the bar for console manufacturers would be set higher from "make a good console then extract value" to "make a good console, then make the best digital marketplace for it, then extract value" which seems fair to me. Make the big three sweat a lil.
Tbf I'm pretty sure the main reason people are gonna be buying omnichords is because they want specifically omnichords- the layout + sound of the thing has a pretty strong romanticism/pop culture significance to it.
copyright based scarcity is effectively dead for anyone with an Internet connection anyway
honestly I think a gratuity model may become dominant with or without any legal changes at this point
you'll often see on YouTube patreon revenue equally or dwarfing ads
the reliance of the music industry on merch seems similar too*
I think people are more willing than you'd think to pay for art simply because they understand it won't exist without money.
*(if that sounds like a stretch, consider if in a world devoid of copyright, whether a Walmart printed band shirt for cheap would be equivalent for most purchasers to the same shirt sold by the actual artist )
I'm having a hard time imagining what role AI (in around its current state) would actually play in creating Portal.
The only professional art assets I'd imagine you could substitute with AI work might be textures, which already tend to be found in libraries rather than handmade. Actual spritework is still quite far off and 3D Models even more so. Not to mention an AI definitely can't do much for art direction or getting your assets to actually look good put together.
Music and Writing seem too far off right now to even consider, let alone design work. So what essential element is Generative AI bringing at the moment? Skipping out on Voice Actors? (I don't believe it's on par with professional work on that front either but it's closest and people aren't as discerning.)
The most I can see besides that is it could speed some parts of art concepting and save you a buck on texture licensing.
Revolutionizing the programming part with copilot or such seems more believable, although since Steam isn't barring use of AI code (How would they even know?) I don't think that's what you mean.
Nintendo has used Unity for certain titles. Off the top of my head I can think of the Pokemon Sinnoh remakes, Super Mario Run, I think the fire emblem mobile game too?
To be fair the market forces that apply to multiplayer games are quite different from singleplayer, on multiplayer you have network effects and such to worry about. I, personally sorta... buy the twitter cope? But I think it obviously doesnt apply to Multiplayer.
Altho, actually going to check my assumptions.. I found that out of 200-ish randomly selected steam games. I could find about 5 that were singleplayer, genuinely unpopular and looked good in screenshots/descriptions. Out of those only 2 didn't review poor to middling, and 1 of those passed the subjective test of "Would I play this?".
The market for consoles would still exist. It would just be that the bar for console manufacturers would be set higher from "make a good console then extract value" to "make a good console, then make the best digital marketplace for it, then extract value" which seems fair to me. Make the big three sweat a lil.