I don´t know... we can´t say for sure... One thing seems clear, though.. consoles will not sell as well as we´ve seen so far. The console market will decrease and it will become a niche market again. Many people will turn to their PCs and tablets for gaming.

I think it is spread out more now that there are more devices to game on. I do know some people who are getting tired of paying $60+ a pop for triple A titles.

I have several problems with his argument.

- There were plenty of shitty games on older consoles, dumped out by companies wanting a quick buck. The PS2 had no shortage of shovelware; revisionist, myopic history by the Internet leads people to act like it was all Ico's and Devil May Cry 3s. Indeed, it happened on ALL of the most successful systems in each gen, including the NES.

- As Otaku said, his point about game quality was undermined by his emphasis on endings, rather than the entirety of the games. The complaints I've heard about Dead Space 3 and Call of Duty are more holistic; people say the former abandoned it's roots while the latter is stenciled in year after year. I didn't even know people didn't like the ending for MW3, TBH.

- His constant focus on stock prices was also too narrow in scope. Why no mention of any of the companies' earnings? Or sales numbers for specific games? The constant rise in dev costs? A wider range of evidence would've made his point far more convincing. Instead, it came off as incomplete; he cited Ubisoft's stock price, for instance, but they posted some great earnings recently.

- The point about mobile gaming was contradictory. He cites it as being a distruptive force due to the drop in quality of console games, but mobile development is FAR more similar to the old Atari situation. That's where the real mass production of dubious crap is going on; much lower dev costs and manpower, alongside a user base even Nintendo's handhelds will never touch, has opened the floodgates.

I do think that gaming is in a tenuous situation right now, but he did a pretty mediocre job of explaining why IMO. I think the console market is going to shrink--by how much will depend on what happens--but I don't see it crashing outright.

I think we will see a contraction, but I find 'crash' is a bit much. We will have to see how the next generation of systems do (including the Wii U). But I've noticed when companies have their backs up against the wall they tend to innovate (or at least play their cards right and do less stupid things). Sony is starting to push some good moves with the PS4 after their long low point this gen, and I expect Nintendo to do the same if things start to get sour with the Wii U.

While there's some truth to what's he's saying these arguments are seriously flawed.

The biggest problem is the cost to make a AAA game. It's too much. If you spend a whack of $$$ to make one (and nowadays AAs just don't sell - ask THQ) and it misses the mark, it seriously hurts, then the publisher is trying to get the next game out ASAP so recoop. Too many misses, and you're going to be out of business. We've seen this a lot this gen. Both smaller companies and studios of bigger companies that have a miss or two and their gone - even if they were forced to rush their game out. So in that respect, yes he's right and EA is a good example of a company trying to hurry games out, desperate for a hit. And really now that they've sullied KoToR, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Dead Space, Sims, SimCity, Metal of Honor about all that's left is Battlefield (and of course EA Sports).

Compound that with even more expensive (even if it's not much more, it's still more) development costs for PS4/720 and mobile (and indie PC) games producing a ton of great (and an even greater ton of not so great) games with a lot more innovation and diversity than what consoles have - taken a progressively bigger share of the pie (Nintendo is feeling it most ATM) and it all spells trouble.

But I don't see a crash. More of a transition into a new form. Like the music industry has done. CD's are dying but the music industry lives on.

I can see a gaming console crash,for those exact reasons. Other then smart phones and tablets,what will the new form be? It's really hard 2 say.

While I personally don't agree with everything in his analysis. I hardly ever completely agree with anyone's analysis. I have to say though that the core of his argument has some merit, but pushing games out the door unfinished. Is not the real problem, but a symptom of the real problem. Which is that a lot of companies are practicing horrendously poor time management. Which is not only resulting in a poor delivery subsidized by shady business practices, but is actually the root cause of the explosion in game budgets.

Small teams working longer on projects are many times more efficient. Then throwing a human wave at the task. The increase in production speed is in no way justified by the excessive costs. Especially when it results in a fairly substandard product. That might anger, or even alienate consumers. Smaller teams, and longer time tables also allow games to see a lengthier design phase. Blitzing is cutting that design phase down dramatically, and that results in rampant copy pasting previous games into newer games.

I think his argument for the result of symptom though is probably accurate. The big players are indeed overcompensating, and it is really only a matter of time before the public tires of it, and starts to look almost exclusively to smaller players, and more efficient big players to service their needs, and once that happens publishers like Electronic Arts, Activision, Ubisoft, and even Nintendo are going to feel a real pinch. Honestly I can't explain why Nintendo opts to copy paste so much. Maybe it is just fear of doing something different.

That isn't the whole industry however. Both Sony and Microsoft seem to be using common labor pools to augment smaller teams. So that the teams can incubate their games longer. Zenimax on the other hand seems to give their teams just plain long development cycles. The same seems to hold true for Take 2. So it hardly seems to be a universal phenomena. That said I think that only about half the industry will crash. The other half seems to be fairly healthy. So maybe we will have a one year or two year reset.

No, I assure you, watching that video would be a waste of my time.

Make your point using words or not at all.

Let me guess, competition from smartphones is somehow going to magically start killing off the 3DS?

The WiiU is currently selling poorly so it will for some reason continue to sell poorly even when games release for it, and the PS4720 will also sell poorly despite us having no reason to think they will?

How'm I doing?

He touches on smartphones a bit, and also addresses the rumors about PS4 and 720 possibly blocking used games.

But the majority of the video is about publishers putting out mediocre games because they are rushing development teams. He compares this with the same thing that happened right before the first crash.

Though i'd say he puts too much emphasis on the ending of games as opposed to the over casualization of them in order to reach "broader" markets, which in my opinion is the bigger problem.

Different between then and now is this:

* Back during the crash of the early 80s, no one was sure that videogames were a sustainable entertainment form.  Today, it is pretty established.

* Back during the 1980s, there was no way to get word or feeling of thing sucking.  Today, we do have that.  If game rentals die off though, that will mean more closer to the 80s, but there is still demos and whatnot.

The rest is very similar actually.  But I don't see a crash 80s style though.