CITIC Securities: AI Reshapes the Gaming Industry, with a Focus on Companies with AI UGC Platform Opportunities

CITIC Securities' research report indicates that since 2025, generative AI has continuously lowered the barriers to game development and has driven content production from "labor-intensive" to "intelligent enhancement," resulting in a significant expansion of the industrys supply side. However, the market has not linearly entered a stage of "a hundred flowers blooming" in terms of value realization; on the contrary, player attention, product differentiation, and long-term operational capabilities have become even scarcer. CITIC Securities believes that AI will not simply dilute the value of the gaming industry; rather, it will shift the industry's value anchor from "whether content can be produced" to "whether high-quality products can be continuously created, traffic can be obtained, and commercialization achieved." The gaming industry is transitioning from an era of "capacity constraints" to an era of "scarcity re-evaluation," with leading companies benefiting the most. CITIC Securities predicts that the value release of AI in the gaming industry chain will be divided into two stages: in the short term, AI will enter the development pipelines of leading manufacturers, enhancing the maintenance of evergreen products, the development of high-spec new products, and global trial-and-error capabilities; in the medium to long term, as model capabilities improve, token costs decrease, and platform infrastructure is perfected, AI is expected to expand content supply through AI UGC and create new experiences through AI Native, further enlarging market size. It strongly recommends leading companies with comprehensive industrialization capabilities and those with opportunities in AI UGC platforms, and suggests paying attention to firms that have a foundation in content platforms.