For several years now, people have been talking about the next "video game crash." That the out-of-control budgets and general stagnation of the industry will cause the big companies that define the industry to fail, taking much of the edefice down with it. Or something like that, I've heard a few variations.

I'm...skeptical about this idea, but I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility. At the same time, I got to wondering: what could kick the whole thing off?

Do you see the industry crashing anytime soon? If so, when, and how?

I think game developers are comiting suicide realy, tehyre ambitions are borderlining megalomania, they always want more graphical fidelity, better animations, more perfect motion capture and bigger worlds and thats whats harming the industry. Just tone down on the megalomania and deliver good games, gamers will have fun and devs can turn a profit.

Seriously spending 3-4 years on 1 project is suicidal, if it doesnt sell extremely well it harms the devs big time. Its getting to  apoint that even selling well dont always work, that ahppened ot LA Noir and Bioshok Infinite for instance.The same thing is happening to movies, way too much ambition by producers, they need to tone things down.

It will crash hard. No survivors will be found.

I hope so.

*rolls eyes*
The gaming industry right now is too big to fail.

Not on Sony's watch, now that they are back on top again gaming will bloom like it's 1996

I don't think we'll ever see a Gaming Crash; there's way too many people playing games and enjoying them for the whole industry to fail. We might see stagnation and decline, but never a gaming crash, like the one in the 80's. That's like asking if the movie industry will crash, or music, or literature. These are hobbies enjoyed by millions of people, and so is gaming.

If the AAA games drops in creativity, the indie devs will pick that part up, earning more money, and thus being able to create bigger and bigger games, until we (yet again) have the so called "mid tier" games back. I cannot phantom a scenario where the whole industry comes crashing down - unless every developer everywhere suddenly starts making ONLY mediocre/boring games, and that's not gonna happen.

The film comparison is apt, but I think it's a bit more stable.They're a bit too established and diversified to really crash.

The problem with the gaming industry, I think, is that it's  too fractured. Too many/few platforms.

- Game sales are up
- Indie creativity is on the rise
- New hardware is showing huge interest in consumer support
- GTA, COD, Battlefield, Tomb Raider sales all show that gaming can still reach new heights
- Kids are born everyday, and in that comes new potential customers
- Smartphones, tablets are in almost everyone's hands, so mobile gaming will also rise
Video gaming will NEVER crash.

It will keep on branching out, finding pockets of viable market segments to extract money from here and there. We're in another huge transitional period right now; the whole term "gaming" is currently being re-defined.
It won't crash, it has already branched out too far and wide for that.
A simultaneous collapse of mobile/tablet, browser, home console, dedicated handheld and social games is quite simply impossible, the gaming market is no longer one massive, highly vulnerable entity as it was in the 90's and early 2000's, it is perfectly possible for one segment/branch to die or come close to dying without the whole market collapsing; look at Arcade machines, the revenue and developer efforts simply flowed elsewhere.
It's like the in thermodynamics; matter cannot simply cease to exist or pop into existence from nowhere. Similarly; the gaming industry won't suddenly just cease to be, it will adjust and change the flow direction, if anything.

The traditional gaming segments are having and about to have some real trouble though; the gaming industry as a whole will have grown into about double by 2015 from 2005 (35 billion-ish 2005 to 68-70 billion-ish in 2015), and this is in the middle of a crippling, global financial crisis.