Let’s be clear, this is purely theoretical. With AI driving up demand for DRAM and NAND, RAM and storage prices are trending upward. Data centers and AI infrastructure get priority, and everyone else feels the ripple effect.
Here’s the interesting part. Modern AAA games regularly exceed 50-100GB. They’re expensive to host, expensive to patch, and increasingly expensive for players to store if SSD prices continue climbing.
Retro(style) digital games? Tiny. Megabytes instead of gigabytes. Minimal hosting costs. Near-instant downloads and updates.
If cloud storage and bandwidth become more expensive over time, efficiency suddenly becomes a serious advantage. Smaller games are cheaper to distribute, cheaper to maintain, and easier for players to install without thinking twice.
Again, this isn’t a prediction, it’s a possibility. Could rising hardware costs indirectly push more developers toward leaner, retro-scale digital releases? Or will it make no difference at all?
We’re curious what you think. Let us know in the comments below.
I dunno if you’re right about retro games in particular (I don’t see Gen Z playing NES roms rather than PS5 games) but for years I’m under the impression that modern game developers didn’t care at all about the size of their games. Titles of around 100 GB that don’t necessarily look and sound better than games of around 25 GB become more and more common imho. Sometimes devs didn’t even care about compressing assets which would have caused them almost zero efford and no real loss in quality.
So if at least THAT changes in a way where devs jump back on the older mindset to keep their install game sizes as small as possible, I’d be happy as I can store more games on my Steam Deck / Steam Machine.
That being said I found myself playing more retro games than ever since I have the Analogue Pocket and MiSTer Pi so I don’t care too much about the current RAM shortage. 🙂