But to directly answer your question... (Off-Topic)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Monday, January 09, 2017, 20:43 (2662 days ago) @ Schooly D
edited by Korny, Monday, January 09, 2017, 20:47

E.T.: The Movie: The Game is often cited as being the "trigger" that set off the video game industry crash of 1983.

If a similar crash were to happen in this generation of gaming in a similar way (i.e. triggered by a disastrous game release), which company and/or franchise do you think is most likely to be involved?

The company most likely to be involved would seem to be Microsoft. They've killed off a number of big-buzz studios and games over the past few years, from Ensemble Studios to Lionhead studios, to smaller companies such as Press Play and the handful of poor saps that were stuck developing Kinect titles. Heck, just today, they confirmed the cancellation of Platinum's "Scalebound", which was looking to be Microsoft's answer to Sony's "Horizon: Zero Dawn"...

Microsoft also tested the waters (well, more like dove in belly-first) to see how much they could impose on consumers by forcing them to buy Kinect 2.0, which failed miserably, and directly contributed to nearly 1:3 console sales against Sony (and which ultimately didn't help their investment in the Kinect, which died slowly, to the dismay of nobody but the investors). Not sure how much they lost in the gamble, but the shuttering of all of those prominent games and studios would put them closer to a crash than any other company (a console crash, if nothing else, since most of their "exclusives" are making their way to PC now), regardless of a crash being highly unlikely.