Evolution of Crytpo Currencies: Bitcoin, Scrypt Algorithms and ASIC mining.

[cbassthefish]

A handful of companies in the past few months, have been taking pre-orders for ASIC Scrypt miners. 
 
This is obviously a game changer for Scrypt based currencies, however will this be profitable, for Scrypt based ASIC miners, medium-long term? 
 
Short term, I think we already know the answer to this. Gridseeds, which have been available for the last month or so, appear to have already made a noticeable impact on the profitability of mining scrypt based currencies.
 
So what happens now? 
 
Will GPU miners really have to give up their cards and quietly retire?
 
Will ASIC scrypt mining kill off scrypt based coins?
 
Will the only chance for scrypt based coins be to hard fork and introduce newer, non-ASIC mineable algorithms?
 
Please discuss.

* Apologies if this topic has already been addressed before.