Epic Games CEO Warns of Industry Crisis Driven by Hardware Shortages

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney warned that the gaming industry faces a potential collapse as AI data centers drive up the costs of memory and storage chips, with hardware prices quadrupling over three years. Sweeney criticized the failed promise of cross-game NFT assets but proposed a similar vision through the Unreal Engine 6 ecosystem, where virtual items could be shared across games via a revenue-sharing model. He emphasized that the industry must collaborate to survive the current hardware supply chain crisis, which has already forced significant restructuring at Epic Games.