It could be worse: PS3 price isn't the highest ever
Over on Scott's blog, he rants in his usual miserly fashion about the price of the upcoming Sony Playstation 3. (I have long held that when Sony products succeed it is usually in spite of themselves; the usability of the PS2 is laughable but they sold a gazillion of 'em. You can hardly fault their success.) Granted, $600 is a ridiculous price to pay for a game machine, but just imagine how much his eyes will pop out of his head when he sees these charts of console prices over the years.Many props to the Curmudgeon Gamer (shouldn't that be Curmudgeonly Gamer?), who helps us to understand that not only was the 3Do priced higher at $700 when it came out, but if one accounts for 13 years of inflation, the console cost nearly $970 in today's dollars. The Neo-Geo? Almost $994. Remember the cheap little piece of junk called the Intellivision? 820 smackers.
Also, a fact I find fascinating and somehow reassuring: Nintendo's consoles keep getting relatively cheaper.
3 Comments:
Uh, Chris? Note that all of those are failed consoles...
My point wasn't that the PS3 was likely to do well or that its high-ticket predecessors were examples of video game success, just that it wasn't the most egregious price-gouging console of all time.
The PS3 may not be all that expensive compared to the Neo-Geo (which had $200+ game carts), but I do think it is beyond what the market will bear. I don't expect Sony to dominate this cycle.
Also, I quibble a bit with the graphs for shading out that last $100 on the XBox 360 and the PS3. The PS3 is a $600 system, and the XBox is a $400 system. You include that extra bit and even in the inflation adjusted graph the PS3 is a huge jump over any console since the Saturn.
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