NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang made waves this week after appearing at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, where he delivered one of his most ambitious statements yet: that Nvidia, essentially, created the modern video game industry. Not contributed to it. Not helped shape it. Created it. And he wasn’t done there, he went on to say that without RTX, the entire computer graphics industry as it exists today would simply not be there.
Huang explained how the company arrived at that position: “Computer graphics was used for things like animation movies, of course, at the time that we were founded. It was during that time where computer graphics was becoming more capable, and we could simulate virtual reality with it, and we applied it to creating a new industry, which did not exist at the time called video games. And so 3D graphics was modernized in my time, consumerized in my time. And the whole video game industry was created in my time.”
The comments generated immediate debate across the gaming and tech communities, and it’s not hard to see why. These are not small claims.
Nvidia’s case: RTX, algorithms, and 33 years of game development
Huang didn’t stop at taking credit for the industry’s origins. He went further, arguing that without Nvidia’s specific technology stack, modern gaming as we know it wouldn’t function: “From the algorithms associated with it, the libraries. In the computer graphics industry, without RTX, there would be nothing today. Without our contribution of all the algorithms that goes into all of the game engines, you wouldn’t be able to enjoy the type of videogames you enjoy today. So Nvidia has been deep in the world of algorithms since day one, 33 years ago.”
He also pointed to the company’s footprint inside the tools developers use every day: “Today, if you look at Epic’s Unreal Engine, Nvidia’s technology is all over it. And you go into every game developer, Nvidia’s technology is all over. That’s the reason why all the games run best on Nvidia for good reason. That’s the reason why Nvidia is the world’s largest gaming platform.”
It’s worth noting that Huang is not entirely wrong on this front. DLSS, Nvidia’s AI-powered upscaling technology, has become one of the most consequential tools in modern game development. DLSS 4, unveiled at CES 2025, introduced Multi Frame Generation, which allows compatible GPUs to generate up to three additional frames for every frame rendered traditionally, pushing frame rates up by as much as eight times. That kind of performance multiplier has genuinely changed how games are built and how they run. Titles that would otherwise be unplayable at high settings are accessible to far more players because of it.
Nvidia’s presence inside game engines, pipelines, and developer workflows is also real and extensive. PhysX, GameWorks, G-Sync, DLSS, RTX ray tracing, these are not minor footnotes. They are deeply embedded in how the industry operates today.
The part of the story Huang left out
The video game industry did not begin with a GPU. Long before the GeForce 256 launched in 1999, Nvidia’s first product marketed as a GPU, there were decades of games, consoles, studios, and developers building an industry from the ground up. Atari, Nintendo, Sega, id Software, and hundreds of others created the cultural and commercial foundation that Nvidia eventually plugged into. Games like Shadow of the Colossus and Gran Turismo were doing technically extraordinary things on PlayStation 2 hardware that had nothing to do with Nvidia. The industry was not waiting around to be invented.
The irony is that Huang himself has acknowledged, in a different setting, just how far Nvidia has moved away from gaming as a priority. At Computex 2025, he told the crowd: “Now our keynotes are 90% not GeForce, but it’s not because we don’t love GeForce, GeForce got us here.” Claiming sole authorship of an industry while simultaneously redirecting the company’s focus away from it is a tension that has not gone unnoticed by gamers.
The numbers tell a similar story. Nvidia posted record full-year revenue of $130.5 billion for fiscal year 2025, up 114% from the prior year, but the overwhelming majority of that came from AI data center customers, not gamers. Data center revenue accounted for over 88% of total revenue in fiscal year 2025, while gaming represented just 8.7%. Meanwhile, by the end of calendar year 2025, Nvidia held 94% of the discrete GPU market, a staggering number, but one driven as much by the collapse of competition as by gamer loyalty.
None of this erases Nvidia’s genuine and significant contributions to modern gaming. RTX technology, DLSS, and the company’s algorithm-level work inside the world’s major game engines have absolutely shaped the experience players have today. That part of Huang’s argument holds up. Where it falls apart is in the word “created”, because thousands of developers, studios, publishers, and hardware makers built this industry across decades, and rewriting that history to center one company, even a dominant one, does a disservice to everyone else who made it possible.
Nvidia deserves its credit. It just doesn’t deserve everyone else’s too.
What do you think, does Jensen Huang have a legitimate point, or is this the most expensive ego trip in gaming history? Leave your take in the comments. Seriously, we want to know where you stand on this one.