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I think the author of that article is making a very big stretch. The author's understanding on the crash of '83 seems to be a little shallow at best. As someone who used to be a serious videogame collector, I can tell you the main reason for the crash was a combination of the influx of really crappy games and completely unrealistic sales projections. For example, to hit two birds with one stone, Atari's Pac-Man is rightly heralded as a perfect example of a lousy game, but the suits at Atari had millions more copies of the game manufactured than consoles existed to play them. Why? They thought people would buy a second copy to keep at their vacation home. (I kid you not. This was an actual reason.)
If the eBook market was flooded with low quality knockoff titles, then we'd have a much closer parallel, as that was a real tipping point in '83. Multiple formats did factor in, to an extent, but I think the importance has been overemphasized. After all, today's market supports three incompatible home consoles and two portable devices. The biggest issues were having companies like Quaker Oats starting game divisions and companies like Atari figuring they could push any old junk into the market place and it'd sell millions.
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