The current industry has survived tons of buggy and terrible games, but what will be the high profile bomb that does an ET and destroys the reputation of the entire industry?
Starfield is insanely hyped, if that bombs, it could have big repercussions.
Other than that, we could have the industry stagnate down to just first-party publishers, considering how Activision has become yet another part of Microsoft.
Maybe it's not possible to have another video game crash, maybe the industry is too established for that to happen again. It's an interesting discussion.
Hard disagree with this analysis.
Your first hypothetical isn’t a hypothetical; you are describing the actual current state of most of AAA development.
Your second hypothetical is a complete non-issue in modern game development. The vast majority of today’s games are created using licensed game engines and prebaked assets. You don’t need chip-level knowledge to code a video game in 2022.
Yes, and eventually it passes the event horizon where it becomes difficult or impossible to make anything worth playing. Which happens all the time in other industries; why would gaming be immune?
Someone still has to make the game engines. How many people know how to do that? Is that number going up or down over time?
Somebody tell that to minecraft users.