On a flaming unicorn, hit by a blue spiked shell, with master chief giving out a low wimper, Mario begging for change and Nathan drake solving Rubik's cubes for food

Will somebody please think of the children

I see no signs of a crash. I think some people WANT it to crash but that doesn't mean it will.

Every time something does happen, these people start thumping their bibles and try to link it to their agenda, even if the event is a fairly normal occurrence. Developers will fail, publishers will go under, projects will be cancelled, and layoffs will happen. There is no industry where everyone and everything is a massive and continual success.

A lot of the language coming from publisher earnings calls lately has been positive. Many developers are committed to lowering budgets by working smarter and more efficiently. Tools are becoming more refined and processes more streamlined. Last gen was a huge transition, much more so than this gen. I think the situation will continue to improve.

This is more or less my thought as well. Anything can happen, but I'm doubtful we'll see a general collapse.

A little something like this.

Car - Microsoft
Roof - Sony
Ticket stand - Nintendo

I agree, but what else to do when you can't really sell a second grade game ? At some point that's what Japan did, stopping over-inflating budgets as they reached their limit. And they are losing. Can you really sell a racing game with 1/4th of the budget and time of Gran Turismo ?

An other option would be to go for casual, independant-like games... not so fun.

I like you.

I believe that anyone expecting a big crash in gaming is deluding themselves. I don't see a scenario - except for end of the world - by which the billions of people now playing games in one form or another would just...stop. We are so diverse with our gaming habits now, with our gaming posibilities, that if there's technology, people will game on it.

And that's fine by me.

There will be only one crash: the mobile crash. The smartphone market is so blown up right now that it is destined to crash sooner or later. Many developers will lose money on shitty apps nobody wants. Just because Angry Birds makes shitloads of money doesn't mean anyone can do that.

As for consoles and PC: those markets are growing. Slowly but healthy. Sure, there are publishers losing money. But it's their own fault when they spent more on advertising than on the games themselves. Good games will sell evem without being at the superbowl or something.

I think we need a proper describtion of the word "crash", or else it'll be hard to discuss it.

As far as I'm aware, people aren't reading or waching movies less now than they did 10 years ago; they might read and watch movies in a different kind of way, but that's not like the whole industry has come crashing down for those businesses. I might be wrong though; I'm no expert about anything ^^ But as for comics, it's my understanding that they've always come and gone somewhat in popularity (hence the term golden and silver age of comics), while video games has always been rising in popularity. And the whole 90's comic crash isn't applyable here I would think; one major aspect of that crash was the speculator bubble - and the fact that publishers learned to use that. Not quite the same thing for video games I would think, no?

Yeah, saying that there will be a video game crash is like saying there will be a board game crash, or card game crash =) human beings LOOOVE to play games; and technology now allow us to game on consoles and PC (and even on phones!), so of course we're gonna do it, just because we can!

I think the pressures of AAA gaming are eventually going to get the better of EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Capcom, Warner Bros, Square-Enix, or Konami. Not all of them. But one of them is eventually going to have a major flop that will have them begging Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo for a major capital injection.