We're way to early in this difficulty period to surmise that difficulty will go down. But I'll go out on a limb and say it's not going down.

And it's not going up because Bitmain (and other consumer miner vendors) will be shipping. It's going up because the large-scale mining operations are still hugely profitable and not shutting down yet. They're adding more miners in stages. We just happen to be in a lull but it's likely to change soon.