The gaming industry dies after the release of the XBox 720 and PS4. The collapse is fueled by the increasingly expensive demands console developers make on developers and publishers. Millions of consoles are buried in the Mojave.
Several years later, gaming is revived when Nintendo releases the designs of all of their previous consoles into the public domain, fueling development of numerous consoles able to play games from multiple systems and stand-alone machines with games loaded in ROM. Nintendo reacts by renewing development of games based on the old technology, and new games for NES, SNES, N64, GC, and Rev platforms are released. The cottage industry fails to expand into the mainstream, though is successful enough to continue development.
Several years later, Sony and Microsoft devleop technology that merges video games with other popular media, like movies, TV, and music. The result is true interactive entertainment, but everyone is forced to buy either Sony or Microsoft brand TV's and movie and music players. A flaw in both technologies makes all of the users permanently sterile, threatening reducing the population in developed countries to unimaginably low levels, and the ensuing legal action wipe out both companies -- who had a combined yearly profit greater than the GDP of the U.S., Japan, Germany, and Switzerland combined -- in one fell swoop.