Videogame stocks slide after Google's Project Genie AI model release
by speckx on 1/30/2026, 7:04:28 PM
Comments
by: brandall10
I find it funny that Take Two is dropping against this news... the company that has taken some 13 years to create a sequel to its primary franchise. Wouldn't tech that could significantly shorten the timeline back to something closer to a few years like it was 20 years ago - while at the same time massively expanding the scope of the game relative to those - seen as a boost to share value? Isn't releasing a billion dollar entry to a franchise 4-5x as quickly something shareholders should be celebrating?<p>It's not like someone is going to prompt up "gimme GTA7 based on what you know about all the past GTAs" and similar crazy high level instructions in a few weeks and go, "yep, that's our standard". There are almost certainly thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of little decisions that go into producing something so massive in scope. Anything that could significantly speed up prototyping, world building, character modeling, NPC behavior, etc, should be seen as a massive boon, and probably the shot in the arm the video game industry needs.<p>And I have the same critique of premium streaming series. Vince Gilligan likes to extoll the benefits of not using AI at all in producing his work, but then he gives us a potentially 3 year span between seasons of his latest entry... where not a lot happened, because it's almost entirely chewing character dev stuff. The idea that a 5-6 season show might take longer to complete than seeing a child born and off to college is absolute bonkers.
1/30/2026, 7:56:19 PM
by: chowells
Good. Video games are being ruined by shareholders demanding returns over good games. The less public investment there is, the better.
1/30/2026, 7:29:53 PM
by: everdrive
Will AI games be good? I think they could be, but in practice when you reduce the friction what happens is that the signal to noise ratio gets much worse. The market will be flooded with garbage, and so per capita games will become worse, even if the absolute number of good games rises. So, I'm not excited. We already have too many games. The market is flooded and fragmented. There are more games released now than I have remaining hours in my life.
1/30/2026, 7:29:38 PM
by: Arwill
Gamers hate AI art as it is, developers hate unreliable AI made code. Lets make something with both.
1/30/2026, 7:42:51 PM
by: 10xDev
You can't be serious, do investors have smooth brain? GTAVI is about to be released (will probably break all kinds of records) and they think Project Genie a prototype of an experimental idea has any impact on the games industry?
1/30/2026, 8:22:57 PM
by: kremi
To understand whether AI world models could replace traditional video games, it might be useful to compare this to how LLMs have affected old-school role-playing games. LLMs are more mature and have been around longer than AI world models so we should've seen the shift there first.<p>I don’t personally know anyone who role-plays, so candid question: have LLMs changed the way people play tabletop RPGs?
1/30/2026, 8:10:55 PM
by: Nekorosu
There is no limit to the ignorance of stock-market investors.
1/30/2026, 8:14:43 PM
by: bnchrch
Related HN Discussion on Genie:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46812933">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46812933</a>
1/30/2026, 7:23:04 PM
by: tonymet
The video games industry is suffering a lot of headwinds, so it's misleading to call this the major driver. Studios have been shutting down for 18+ months. Ubisoft stock is at a ~15 year low as are most big publishers. Many big titles fell flat in 2025 (and there were some surprise wins too -- not all doom). Console sales fell off a cliff. Now hardware is impossibly expensive, putting Gen 6 in doubt. Lots of projects shuttered or delayed, and layoffs.<p>AI and gaming is an important topic, but this story is an oversimplification of what has been hitting the games industry for > 2 years .
1/30/2026, 7:46:23 PM
by: dude250711
It will be a long way to productionize this.<p>I would say an impossibly long way.<p>Unless the idea is to have a new kind of media, distinct from classic games.
1/30/2026, 7:31:36 PM
by: uejfiweun
I have no doubt that someday in the future these world models will revolutionize gaming. However, they are clearly very far off from that point in capability, not to mention the cost. And a lot of these articles I'm seeing are confidently stating very incorrect facts like "this new model will completely change the workflow of game developers and accelerate game development." No it won't.<p>I don't trade individual stocks but it does seem like an easy case of "buy the dip" here.
1/30/2026, 7:24:41 PM
by: ChrisArchitect
Earlier: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46828013">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46828013</a>
1/30/2026, 8:05:56 PM
by: shaky-carrousel
Meh, irrelevant. This... thing comes from Google, which has two guarantees: it'll be unbearably bland, and will be abandoned in one year tops.
1/30/2026, 7:59:51 PM