I've been reading a lot of commentaries about the state of the industry, and I think this are the most endangered parts of the gaming industry.

-Mobile: It has grown too much and too fast. This kind of bussiness developement usually ends abruptly, and if we have into account the lack of loyalty and interest of the casual audience for this games, the terrible practises of mobile publishers, massive oversaturation and lack of quality control on the App store or Google Store, the day something cathes the eye of the mobile audience, the market will crash and burn anyone that invested too much on it. Specially worried with some japanese publishers, that have invested tons of effords and money on that market.

-Retail: The only thing that is stopping digital distribution into becoming the main form of distribution is the horrible pricing of most digital games on console. When publishers realize they can sell a lot of software (and hardware, PC hardware is usually more expensive, but you save in software, that logic can be applied in consoles too), the bigger chains of retail will have to reduce their size, and little stores will have to transform themselves into offering more veried services.

-Handheld: I don't think this will be a really big problem because, with the evolution of hardware, you can make wonders with portable devices. Even if now the only competitors on the market are Nintendo and Sony, we'll have handhelds in the future, even if they are combined or attached with their home consoles counterparts. With Sony becoming more interested in the mini-console market than in handhelds (their PS TV over the Vita lately), we'll have to see and wait what Nintendo does with the NX, whether it becomes a Fusion device or a regular handheld/home console. And even then, as long as Nintendo keeps Pokemon and some of their franchises on dedicated devices it will move a decent amount of consoles.

-Digital distribution on consoles: This is a weird theory of mine, but hear me out. If retail fails and digital becomes the prominent way of selling games, in a couple of decades we might see devices with no DVD-reader (or any kind of disk reader). After that happens, prices might start going up again because the console manufacturers have the monopoly on their distribution. That might anger gamers, because they can't use phisical copies anymore. In this case, consoles themselves might be in danger, but this situation is highly hypothetical, and it could only happen if the retail situation above happens.

What do you think will pop the videogame bubble first?

-Digital distribution on consoles: This is a weird theory of mine, but hear me out. If retail fails and digital becomes the prominent way of selling games, in a couple of decades we might see devices with no DVD-reader (or any kind of disk reader). After that happens, prices might start going up again because the console manufacturers have the monopoly on their distribution. That might anger gamers, because they can't use phisical copies anymore. In this case, consoles themselves might be in danger, but this situation is highly hypothetical, and it could only happen if the retail situation above happens.

Yeah, this is never gonna happen.

Always trying to nickel and dime the consumers would probably do it. But i doubt it will crash like it did in the atari days but rather a different form of crash where the consumers would just stop buying majority of the $60 games cause they ask for so much money even after u bought them. But obviously, that's all speculation and it wont happen anytime soon or it may not happen at all so we will see

I don't see a complete crash happening again, unless it is along with the rest of the world's economies during some great catastrophe.

At this point gaming has transcended its humble roots, and it's now sufficiently mainstream to stick around. We'll see it continue to evolve and it may even contract at times, but I'm skeptical that another industry-threatening crash like in '77 and '83 will happen. Heck, it's become a threat to television and the movie industry, siphoning money away from them... In regards to money the video game industry is stronger than ever.

EA going belly up because of 1 year of bad sales in major series and massiv rise of license costs for sport games.
football is growing much faster than what EA can make with fifa will drive the license prices up next time they have to buy em...

I don't think there will ever be another crisis/crash.

The idea of digital distribution of retail games could be really bad when you consider what happened to services like OnLive, but I think gaming at this point is mainstream enough that even something like that couldn't cause a HUGE crisis.

If gaming went completely digital. Right now. That would cause a crash, guaranteed.

I believe alot of people that buy games, like to have the physical copy and know its theirs. They display their games on their shelfs are are happy to know they are right there if they should ever want to play a game.

Without that, sales would drop. Could be a smaller number though.

I personally like owning games, im not a fan of digital copy buys. Im probably with the minority though.... or just a old fart.

I can't see a complete crash happening, at most there would be a crash for consoles if too many competitors leaped in like Amazon and google with others, they can't sustain themselves forever either and I could see AAA games bubble bursting if they keep with the over inflated budgets and nickle diming shcemes and slicing their games up into tiny piece meals.

It wouldn't completely cave in though, the industry is too big enough to completely vanish.

2 reasons, which work hand in hand, could cause a "crash". I say crash that way, because it will be much less sudden than the north american console crash of 1983 (I refuse to call it the great videogame crash because gaming was still fine on computers in the US and everywhere else on their respective devices) and more a slow descent in sales.

Shitty practices from Videogame companies, both AAA and smaller development companies driving older gamers away, while the market's almost exlusive focus on adult male gamers keeps new gamers from entering the market proper. This holds especially true on PS4 and Xbox ONE, much less so on PC, Smartphones and Nintendos consoles.

A situation like this one already happened before, that time in the north american comics market during the late 80' and 90', where the market crashed due to the older readers stopping reading but no new readers coming to replace them and forcing both Marvel and DC both to sell their companies at a later point to movie studios and to reinvent themselves in the short term.

Since however only a fraction of gaming is will be hit by a similar event, it will not really crash, just the yearly consoles sales will continue to go down like they do for several years now (since 2008 iirc)