Google's Project Genie rollout spurs sell-off: Take-Two, Roblox, Unity shares fall

On January 29, Google began rolling out early access to Project Genie, an experimental AI tool that creates interactive 3D environments from text prompts. The next day, investors sold off video game stocks, producing sharp declines for several major companies. Project Genie is powered by Genie 3 and Gemini and can generate explorable 3D worlds from prompts such as "Cartoonish 3D racing game with toy cars," Kotaku reported.

The tool’s current outputs are short, running about one minute at 24 frames per second and capped at 720p, and demos have shown instability such as a race track changing mid-playback. Investing.com reported steep share drops after the reveal: as of 1:05 p.m. EST, Take-Two Interactive was down over 9%, Roblox had slid nearly 12%, Unity fell about 20%, and Nintendo was down nearly 5%.

Kotaku noted the tumbles happened the same day and were linked to Genie’s unveiling. The Verge reported Genie could be used to produce experiences resembling Mario and Zelda before Google intervened, citing "the interests of third-party content providers." Others have already used the tool to generate crude versions of GTA 6 and Dark Souls, and a social media post highlighted how some investors appear to be betting AI tools like Genie could soon produce entire games.

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