A very interesting article:

http://www.cracked.com/article_20727_5-reasons-video-game-industry-about-to-crash.html

I have been saying for about 2 years now that a game crash could be coming soon.  There are just a ton of parallels with the one of the early 80's.   However I don't think it would be as bad as that one by any means since indies and PC will soldier on no matter what...

What do you guys think?

I read this exact same article last year and the year before.
Funny how these two new consoles are the best selling ever, and how a major player in these systems (indies) pretty much contradicts the entire article.
(Not to mention steambox is coming out as well, which is almost entirely indie games)
Malstrom was wrong about this 3 years ago, and his not so clever copypasta is just as wrong.

Ps4 and xboxone breaking all records and still some think gaming will crash.

The big blockbusters will continue to thrive. But i can see a lot of middle-dev's going out of bussiness.
The future will only hold big AAA's, indies and F2P's.

this. point 3 is just a bad example, that crap barely works as COD itself is on a decline despite adding two more SKUs this year. People werent fooled by that perfect score commercial.

I have my own paranoid theory. It seems some who keep saying it will crash are only saying so because their console of choice isnt doing so hot. But i am paranoid.

But..but...the PS4 and X1 launch!!

On a serious note, a video game crash is definitely a possiblity. I however see it from a different perspective, I don't think consoles will cease to exits, but rather the games; with increases in development costs and time, companies won't be able to make the same amount of games as before, add to the fact that if you need to sell more than 2 million units to become successful, the risks will become higher and higher. I'm a firm believer that maybe by the end of the gen all we are going to see are indie games and huge AAA tittles, everything in between will dissapear or become very rare (talking about consoles hre, not handhelds).

Also, as much as I love me some indie games, they won't become the video game industry "saviors" as many think. Will they be able to increase creativity and fill the gaps between AAA tittles? Sure, however, will they be able to push the industry forward in a financial perpective? How many indie games have become extremely successful and actually increase the market? I can only think of Minecraft really. Sure, some other indie game like Super Meat Boy and the likes have become successful but to not the point where we can call them "industry changers" financially speaking. It also doesn't help that these successful indie developers keep making small games, meaning that they won't push in the industry into more big tittles that it needs to become relevant.

TL;DR version, the game industry won't crash but it could become smaller and less relevant, in both financials and diversity.

Nah. Video games are becoming vices and methods of escape, akin to tobacco, drugs and alcohol.

These things are consumed most by.....get this.....working class or lower tiers of society. Gaming if anything will only get more popular, if only as a means to escape the drudgery of real life :)

The gaming industry is not going to crash, it's seeing a transformation like the film industry did. A few publishers will control most of the big budget releases and then we'll see much smaller stuff from indies.

I don't see the industry crashing in the future. At least, I don't think it's likely, even with the factors mentioned in the article. What I do think is that current trends will continue for at least another 5 years, and that although games may continue to succeed as a business, they will become increasingly, well, boring.

I almost want a crash to happen, if only because I doubt that my favorite companies would be destroyed in the process. There's too much polarization. Either you create the biggest hit in series history, or you doom a franchise. Either your game sells millions, or your company dies. EIther your game is 99 cents with in-game advertisements and micro-transactions, or $60 with slightly fewer in-game advertisements and micro-transactions.

Ironically, the old titan of the industry, Nintendo, is the main refuge of the middle-class game nowadays. Nintendo doesn't really make AAA games other than a console Zelda every few years; All of EAD combined is only about as large as the team that made Resident Evil 6. Games like Mario titles, Animal Crossing, Fire Emblem, and even 2nd party titles like The Wonderful 101 that don't fit in either the 99 cent or AAA model seem to largely come from Nintendo nowadays.

This is also why I love my 3DS. The 3DS, despite its problems, is largely free of many of the industry's greatest poisons. Budgets are reasonable, a floor and ceiling of roughly $2 and $40 is set for most games, micro-transactions are fairly rare, and the system gets titles that combine creativity and production values. The Vita, conversely, seems to want to be a handheld console, but in a bad way, its library largely divided between as many cheap downloadable titles as possible and a couple of high budget titles that might easily have been AAA if the resolution were a bit higher and required more resources.

Given the two options, a crash would be preferable IMO. The business model video games had from roughly the early 90's to mid 00's seems like the ideal one from a consumer's point of view. If a crash were to happen, consumers would suffer for a few years, but somebody would pick up the pieces. If the game industry goes the way of the film industry... let's just say there's a reason why I don't watch many films.