There is already an impact from the credit crunch. It's harder to come up with funds to start up risky development projects. This could hamper creativity in the industry.
Regarding direct impact on sales, I believe we'll start to see negative impact towards the end of this year or in 2010. People may start pirating more, or buying more used games. Also, people will start waiting longer for games to come down in price which will hurt retailer and then publisher revenues. People will still cough up $60 for the next GTHaloOfWar, but smaller games will suffer.
If all the platforms required PS360 levels of budgets to make games, I could see a hard crash in the industry. As it stands we'll probably have a soft crash, with tons more takeovers of smaller publishers and some more bankruptcies.
My Mario Kart Wii friend code: 2707-1866-0957
