Lots of contributing factors, but most of them would have to be in place for a hypothetical crash to occur.
Fragmented market: too many gaming platforms although as long as each maintains its own established niche through consistent and quality releases, this is less of a factor. I don't see this as being a real potential factor unless several publishers decide to jump into the hardware business and bring nothing new to the business.
A consumer wide shift away from gaming as a significant form of entertainment. Gaming is now unquestionably mainstream, in part responsible for maintaining current bloated development budgets.
It won't take too many failed 8 figure projects over a short period of time to result in similar projects in development from being axed along with their development studios.
Excessive focus on the non-traditional gamer in terms of number of projects/games and overall resources.
By itself, this is not a problem, but if the industry becomes too reliant upon this broad niche to fund bigger projects, to produce the highest yield of profits through volume development of quick and easy titles, or simply to stay in business to continue to churn out uninspiring softs, it could lead to a loss of mainstream interest in the gaming media as a form of entertainment (as was the case in '83).
If the industry becomes dependent upon the "casual" (broader market non-traditional/core gamer), then a significant loss of sales from this demographic would in effect remove one of the legs holding up the industry as it currently stands.







