Well, if the modern AI bubble pops, like sceptics predict, then they'll have to get back to selling consumer GPUs. If there isn't a bubble and modern AI remains popular then the AI cards will become the standard for consumer GPUs. And if all else fails there'll probably be some Chinese companies willing to make cheap throwaway cards for people willing to pay.

Oh, that's a good question.
What I think will happen if the company decides to exit those markets, they'll probably split off the chunk that used to deal with those products.

Or some top engineers/leads of the gaming sector of the respective companies will probably go and set up their own shop sell GPUs or whatever.

Someone will see a business in it and continue.

Intel ARC for everyone!

On a serious note, yes, I can believe NVidia would exit the consumer market. They've made stupid blunders before, they'll do it again.
However, the consumer market will still be here when the AI market gets saturated. Or burst. Either one will happen, and then NVidia will need someone to sell stuff to. If AMD is smart they'll try to elbow their one into the consumer market and see NVidia crash and burn.

I don't think they'll exit per se. Unless the AI gamble doesn't pay off and the bubble pops, I reckon Nvidia is gonna continue moving away from the consumer market by way of wildly overpriced GPU offerings for regular consumers. AMD will probably carry on making reasonably priced gamer-class GPUs because they don't have CUDA, and OpenCL will probably never see widespread use. Based on where Nvidia and AMD's competitors are at, I'm going to hypothesize that designing GPUs is probably very very hard. lol. I haven't looked into it for a while, but the last time I checked, domestically produced Chinese GPUs were nowhere near competitive against their American counter-parts - and this is China I'm talking about. Much like the Romans, China's known for copying/reverse-engineering tech from other countries, but it doesn't look like they've been able to reverse-engineer anything Nvidia and AMD have come out with.

I imagine that this is the time for another graphics hardware company to step up and make GPUs catered to consumers, but I don't have much hope for that happening unless some genius entrepreneur steps up and starts a company especially for that purpose. More than that, I'm assuming Nvidia and AMD probably hold many patents that make it difficult for anyone else to create competing products - CUDA being a good example.

Quoting: blindcoderIntel ARC for everyone!

I don't own one, but the Arc doesn't seem too bad as an economical choice. If I was gonna build a super cheap gaming PC, I'd consider an Arc.

It's a very possible decision. NVIDIA will keep consumer grade materials in their back pocket for worst case scenario, but I will probably put my ego ahead at that time and not buy something because, as a consumer, I feel betrayed in that I was told to give them more money for worse hardware because they sold themselves to the devil for short term gains.

I don't think AI is going anywhere due to world wide government financial pushes and whatever behind the scene deals are happening.

Quoting: StrigiSomeone will see a business in it and continue.

THIS.

Whoever doesn't withdraw from the consumer market is going to wind up dominating that market segment. It will be very difficult for those that left it to get back in later.

Do I think that the CEO of Nvidia is stupid/greedy enough to take that risk? Yes.