A comparitive look at console prices.

Steve Schulze

Following the announcement of SOny's new super expensive console, someone put together these interesting little graphs comparing prices with and without inflation factored in.
http://curmudgeongamer.com/2006/05/history-of-console-prices-or-500-aint.html

skankerzero

I wonder how accurate those are.

My SNES cost 136 dollars. I remember because I saved money for it so I could get it near launch. That site says it costed 200.

But yeah, everyone forgots how much the NeoGeo and 3DO costed.

Zergxes

The next question is- has the mean household income in the targeted sales regions increased to match inflation?

Tulkamir

I believe that Inflation more or less requires that or else there'd be an economic crisis. :P Inflations happens as a result of people making more money. (People make more, can spend more, buy more, companies raise prices, pay their employees more, so people make more, etc... it's a cycle).

Unless my economics is rusty, which is deffinatly possible. My memory of high school is somewhat hole ridden. :P

Ninjas

More or less inflation is driven by the amount of money vs. the amount of goods in an economy.

People's real income has been slipping these last couple decades, but not by much. I wouldn't expect that it would effect these charts much even if they took it into account.

This is really cool actually. My cousin owned a (cartridge) Neo-Geo back in the day.

KDR_11k

What those inflation arguments always forget is that the mean price of electronics is going down rapidly.

Joshua Stubbles

I bought the NSES for $200 when it came out...
I guess it's all about where you bought it.

Also, the NeoGeo was $1000 at the cheapest. Maybe if you bought it factory-direct it was only $700. And also, the high priced systems didn't fail because of their price. They failed because they had no good software. The NeoGeo had the best games of the high-cost systems, and it's STILL a popular game system today (VHS-sized games and all). The Saturn's only real great game was Panzer Dragoon. And the 3DO was just atrocious.

If the PS3 can come out with amazing game experiences, and unriveled multimedia stuff, it will do just fine.

KDR_11k

I don't think so. If it was released in a vacuum, maybe. But it's going up against competitors that are significantly cheaper and offer an experience that is not significantly worse (may even turn out better).

BTW, Keiji Inafune said they aren't going to make any Megaman games for the PS3 because the people that buy a PS3 are going to have a lot of money and don't want to play Megaman (TBH the logic behind that conclusion eludes me but I suppose he didn't just want to say "the platform is a nightmare to work on").

Toomas

PS2 did cost more than $500 where i live and it was sold out for months.

Luxury

All I see when I look at those charts is: God DAMN was Dreamcast awesome!

Joshua Stubbles

[ QUOTE ]
But it's going up against competitors that are significantly cheaper and offer an experience that (may even turn out better)

[/ QUOTE ]

So, -$100 is "signifigantly cheaper"? That's 2 games, or 1 hard drive. That's nothing. Or, -$200 from the deluxe PS3. That's 4 games. So you save an extra 2 weeks, and only buy 1 game at launch. Still not that bad.

Also, since no real games have been shown for PS3 (other than early demos), it's impossible to determine how the gameplay experiences are going to be.
I felt the same way about x360 last year at E3, as you do with PS3. The games looked/played average at best, and the price threw me for a loop. But what happened? X360 has taken off, has great games, and the price was worth it. For the gameplay experiences that Sony has given us in the past, I think at the very least we owe them a chance. If 3-4 months after launch they don't have good games, I'd throw in the towel on Sony. But I'm not going to pre-emptively lash out at them.

KDR_11k

If you think 500$ for a good that usually costs 200-300$ is fine feel free to buy it. I certainly won't. It doesn't look like it'll be three times as fun as a Gamecube.

hawken

[ QUOTE ]
All I see when I look at those charts is: God DAMN was Dreamcast awesome!

[/ QUOTE ]

dude I still play my DC and I still think its awesome

Luxury

Ditto. I guess I probably should have used present tense.

Toomas

[ QUOTE ]
If you think 500$ for a good that usually costs 200-300$ is fine feel free to buy it. I certainly won't. It doesn't look like it'll be three times as fun as a Gamecube.

[/ QUOTE ]

But GC isnt infinite times better than rock-paper-scissors.

KDR_11k

Of course it is. RPS has an entertainment value of ~0.

Penzer

I'm super excited about a lot of the upcoming games for 360. As far as everybody ranting about ps3 graphics being so much better that it's going to make it a better system, I did an interesting "quiz" lately. I took screenshots from Gears of War, Metal Gear Solid, Mass Effect and Final Fantasy 13 and placed them all in folders named A,B,C and D. I zipped the folders and sent them to people that aren't gamers, mostly people I knew from back home. I asked them to let me know which ones they thought had the best graphics and to get back to me.

I took about 5 screenshots per game from IGN. I decided beforehand that they were all going to come from IGN since it represents a mainstream view, and also because I didn't want to scour the internet trying to find the optimal screenshots for each game.

I'm still waiting for some more responses, but interestingly enough Gears of War has the most votes for 1st place right now.

I just did this because I'm sick of hearing rants about graphics, when the difference is pretty marginal to an "average consumer".

As far as games go, I know mgs is going to be amazing but I'm not really interested in final fantasy 13s. Dead Rising look like a ton of fun, the Lost Planet demo was a ton of fun and I think its going to make for a great game. Mass Effect is going to be a ton of fun, with Bioware and Pandemic working together on it.

Steve Schulze

[ QUOTE ]
So, -$100 is "signifigantly cheaper"? That's 2 games, or 1 hard drive. That's nothing. Or, -$200 from the deluxe PS3. That's 4 games. So you save an extra 2 weeks, and only buy 1 game at launch. Still not that bad.

[/ QUOTE ]Don't forget the new TV with the updated version of HDMI which you'll need to get the Blueray to do its thing. Add that price on and you could get yourself a 360, a Wii and a decent PC.