For there to be another crash, all three consoles would have to lose control over publishers completely, the same way Atari did. First, games cannot be made independently, outside of the console makers and be sold anymore. Second, entire games cannot be copied from each other anymore and sold as new releases. Just look at the backlash that PC adventure game got when it was discovered it had used assets from Oblivion.
The likeliest scenario would be development costs getting too high, but even then, the market would just work itself out, not crash. All console manufacturers would cease to create new and expensive hardware if something were to occur that drastically. We already saw the first steps of this with the Wii and I expect Sony and Microsoft to follow suit accordingly.
Tag: Became a freaking mod and a complete douche, coincidentally, at the same time.
