As the gaming market faces an unprecedented crisis in 2025 due to stagnant growth and soaring development costs, artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as a solution.

Omdia recently released a report titled The Games Tech AI Revolution.

According to this, the gaming industry, which is facing issues of cost, competition, and manpower, is now accepting AI as a 'necessity' rather than a 'choice'.

The global games industry's value has remained stagnant since 2021, at $217 billion, while the cost of producing AAA titles is rising sharply.

Spider-Man 2's development budget of $300 million is three times the cost of Battlefield 4 a decade ago.

The pressure on development costs is a result of intensified competition in graphics and world building.

Creating a high-quality, massive open world requires hundreds of people.

On the other hand, consumer spending has stagnated or declined since 2020, worsening the cost-to-revenue structure.

The intensifying competition is also a burden.

Mobile & middot; The saturation caused by the mass production of indie titles, the growth of Chinese and Korean studios, and the rising cost of user acquisition due to restrictions on ad tracking are all contributing factors.

For some mobile games, the cost of acquiring users exceeds the cost of production.

In this situation, AI is emerging as a 'savior' for developers.

According to Omdia research, 36% of verified game developers worldwide have already integrated AI into their daily work.

However, only 8% use game-specific AI tools, while the rest utilize general-purpose models such as ChatGPT and Midjourney.

The number of AI solution providers is also rapidly increasing.

The number of gaming AI vendors, which stood at just 18 in March 2023, has grown to over 150 in just over a year.

The market is populated by 18 technology categories, including 2D and 3D asset creation, animation automation, code support, graphics rendering, and user acquisition optimization.

The AI adoption rate by job category is also notable.

Programming and engineering are the sectors that use generative AI at 35%, followed by game design (29%).

Art, audio, and writing fields remain at 20% due to lack of tool maturity, but interest is growing.

Many studios prefer to purchase third-party solutions rather than develop their own.

The AI field is still unproven, the return on investment is difficult to predict, and suppliers and investors are expected to share the risk.

However, there are many obstacles to the introduction of AI.

The technology is being developed due to issues such as lack of precision and reliability, copyright and ethics regulations, and economic feasibility.It takes time to fully settle into the line.

Experts recommend a short-term (12-18 months) strategy to closely monitor the AI tool market, examine legal and ethical issues, and then implement small-scale pilot projects.

In the mid-term (2-3 years), mature AI will be introduced in animation, asset creation, text, and code support to dramatically reduce development costs and enable small and medium-sized studios to expand their project scale.

AI technology providers must secure early adopters by improving usability and reliability, integrating with major game engines, and focusing on free-to-play pricing.

As the market matures, it will also need to address usage-based billing, investment in real-time generation capabilities, and compliance with AI legal and ethical standards.

Hardware and infrastructure providers should focus on supporting AI inference workloads for the time being, but also prepare for increased demand for bare metal servers and local hardware in preparation for the commercialization of real-time generation technologies in the future.

AI is already delivering tangible benefits, such as increasing game development productivity and relieving developers of their creative burden.

“While AI tools aren’t perfect yet, if used well, they can provide AAA-level development capabilities to small and medium-sized studios without the burden,” said an Omdia representative.