If there’s no relief on hardware, the odds go up. Game devs have been able to constantly chase higher highs because consumer hardware has constantly evolved. There’s been zero pressure to optimize or to rein in the graphics because a ton of people can still play day 1, and a bunch more will become able to play them soon as they yearn for it and strive to upgrade.

But if users can’t upgrade because hardware is obscenely expensive or rare? That stops being the case. They have to cater to the average consumer in AAA because they desperately need to recoup the obscenely massive investment in development. If they refuse to optimize, if they insist on pushing graphics to ever new heights, they won’t sell shit because nobody will be able to run it. The market will demand that they start working within some limitations.

Or the AI bubble pops, hardware goes back to being affordable, and the idea of limitations becomes little more than a bad dream to execs.