I think outsourcing will be the key to the future of games. At the moment almost every aspect of a new game has to be built from scratch by a company, unless they buy an already existing engine. This means constantly reinventing the wheel.
If you look at how movies are made, certain aspects of the films are almost always outsourced to experienced companies - particularly visual effects and sound design. I can see this being a very fruitful process for games. Some companies can specialise in making game engines (I'm looking at you, id), some in physics engines (Havok), some in AI, some in audio. That way the game developers can focus on the design and gameplay, while experienced teams can focus on the technical aspects.
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