Let's imagine a scenario: we are in the last generation of hardware before the great videogame crash of the early 21st century, no wait, let's call it "The Great Video Game Crash of the Early Third Millenium"
For the sake of argument, let's say it'll be twice as long as the crash of 83/84/85 (remember NES didn't come out until October of 85). We're looking at four maybe five years of no new consoles coming out, for whatEVER reason. I'm not looking for a reason why this may or may not occur, I'm looking for why this would necessarily be a good or bad thing for you as a gamer, personally.
I would actually find it a relief as I currently don't have the time/money to keep up with all the new stuff or to devote a lifetime to playing an MMORPG. I think it would be GREAT if Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft gave up and went away for about 5 years. Games that I'd like to play would become cheaper, ebay prices for them would go down and I wouldn't have to start pining away for a system I can neither afford nor cram into my house/playing time.
Of course, I'm not wishing for it to happen because crashes in one market tend to have ripple effects into other markets. I'm not saying that huge companies going under is what I want for the world. I'm simply saying that as a gamer, a crash would make my gaming choices a little more simple and I think I might not hate that.
Then again, I also remember when I was 11. I had just read Stephen King's "The Stand" and I thought that it might be cool if the whole world were destroyed by some super flu (except me and some of my friends, of course) because then I'd be able to just walk into Sears and pick up any game I wanted to play for nothing. So, this topic may just be symptomatic of my subconscious misanthropic tendancies.