If the surge of indie game popularity has shown anything, it's that games can be 8-bit hot pixellated messes but still touted as visual masterpieces as long as there's a decent global lighting engine somewhere in the mix.
I think, as you say, AI will be the next paradigm for gamers, and having specialised chips on these GPUs that can turn a scripted NPC story-based interaction into a do-what-you-want-under-these-contraints a la "AI town"[1] might keep them in business a little longer before they have to start upping the visuals again.
I think, as you say, AI will be the next paradigm for gamers, and having specialised chips on these GPUs that can turn a scripted NPC story-based interaction into a do-what-you-want-under-these-contraints a la "AI town"[1] might keep them in business a little longer before they have to start upping the visuals again.
1: https://github.com/a16z-infra/ai-town