Today's Game Consoles Are Historically Overpriced (arstechnica.com)
- Reference: 0178931446
- News link: https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/08/29/1729201/todays-game-consoles-are-historically-overpriced
- Source link: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/08/todays-game-consoles-are-historically-overpriced/
> Today's video game consoles are [1]hundreds of dollars more expensive than you'd expect based on historic pricing trends. That's according to an Ars Technica analysis of decades of pricing data and price-cut timing across dozens of major US console releases.
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> The overall direction of this trend has been apparent to industry watchers for a while now. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft have failed to cut their console prices in recent years and have instead been increasing the nominal MSRP for many current consoles in the past six months.
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> But when you crunch the numbers, it's pretty incredible just how much today's console prices defy historic expectations, even when you account for higher-than-normal inflation in recent years. If today's consoles were seeing anything like what used to be standard price cuts over time, we could be paying around $200 today for pricey systems like the Switch OLED, PS5 Digital Edition, and Xbox Series S.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/08/todays-game-consoles-are-historically-overpriced/
Nope. (Score:2)
Today's games are cheap. Today's consoles are cheap. But console prices are not dropping the way they used to. There's a good graph in the middle of the article (after the bad graphs at the top). Consoles are sold at a loss (even at $500 or $600 dollars) so the pricing floor is different than it used to be and price drops after several years are more shallow.
No the article is correct (Score:2)
The super Nintendo launched with two controllers and the killer app super Mario world in the bundle for around $400 USD adjusted. The Nintendo switch is $525 street price and you need to spend $70 on a second controller.
The controllers are all so much less durable but that's besides the point. Mostly because they cheap out and refuse to use hall effect joysticks.
Consoles are not being sold at a loss right now. Most estimates have been pulling in a small profit with the switch pulling in a large prof
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> Consoles are not being sold at a loss right now.
Not sure I buy that. Have anything to back it up?
PC-equivalent hardware to a PS5 would go for between 2-3x the price of a PS5. (Remember- PS5 is just a PC)
I've been surprised that they actually keep making the damn things.
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The SNES launched at $472 USD, adjusted for inflation. It also did not include a second controller. The Nintendo Switch 2 costs $449 USD, not $525. I'm not sure where your street price comes from, as the console is currently in stock for MSRP at all major Canadian retailers, and in the US, it's available for immediate shipping at MSRP from Nintendo's own website, so there's no reason that anybody would ever pay more than MSRP.
It's true that the SNES included a pack-in game for that price, and the Switch 2 p
Seriously? (Score:3)
Call me a troll if you want, I know you will. But when you look at the per hour basis of these entertainment systems, they seem very cheap to me. Way cheaper than my hobbies at any rate.
I understand the point the article is comparing today's prices to the prices of yesterday. I get that. I I don't disagree. I don't agree either. I just don't know. I'm just saying, compared to "what you get", the stuff seems cheap to me.
The stuff you use with it is cheap too. I mean, I just got a 98" TV for $1000. My god. That's so cheap, they may as well give it away. My previous TV was a 60" that I paid $1400 for, and that was in 2010 dollars too. So the new TV is WAY cheap.
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> My previous TV was a 60" that I paid $1400 for, and that was in 2010 dollars too. So the new TV is WAY cheap.
That's because your new TV rapes your privacy 24/7, which your old TV didn't do.
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What privacy?
Oooh, he's watching YouTube!! Quick! Write that down! YouTube, at 3:05pm!!
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Nothing says you have to connect the TV to the internet. Those independent devices -- including DVD players, Blue Ray players and cable TV boxes -- still work.
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> Some of the newer TVs DO require an internet connection.
Exactly: that's why they're cheaper - they demand to be online to do even the most basic things (like, showing static even) so they can continually rape your privacy.
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Maybe. But not all of us have such TVs.
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Then your TV wasn't that "cheap".
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Well, seemed cheap to me. Both in absolute terms and relatively terms.
It was $1080, with tax.
My 60 was $1400.
My old tube TV, which was 32" I think, was around $750, back in the day.
Intellivision was only $299.95 in 1980 (Score:2)
That's about $1200 today for a game console. So relatively cheap compared to PS5, which doesn't even have a number pad on its controllers.
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You mean expensive compared to PS5, which goes for roughly half that?
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It was a joke about how much people were paying for PS5 on ebay for a while. Sorry it fell kind of flat.
Cost /= price, value = price (Score:1)
Today's game consoles enable new types of games. Try playing a modern PS5 game on a PS1; you can't do it. That's new value.
It doesn't matter if the components go down in price, or if the cost to manufacture is lower. If it provides value at the price they're offering, people will buy it. Besides, why do you buy a switch? To gain access to the game ecosystem that Nintendo built. You don't pay for a switch for a switch, you pay for a switch to play Zelda, Mario, and Metroid and all the other exclusi
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And there's truth in downgrading. I bought a PS4 years ago and found myself only playing one game, which would update with multiplayer add-ons that I never played. The main screen of the console did little more than hawk unwanted goods at me. That's a lack of value. Since the same game I was playing is available with a PS3, when the PS4 broke, I never replaced it. That PS3 still works and I can stream the video services I use regularly. Oh, and it plays PS2 and original PS games natively, so I have plenty o
Obvious... (Score:1)
Tariffs?! So much winning.
Lower profit from game sales? (Score:1)
Are the vendors making less money from game sales these days? My thought is that maybe game sales used to subsidize console sales and if game sales are down then the subsidy is gone (or less), therefore the console makers are now charging closer to true cost for a console.
100 x Better though (Score:2)
... its in the game...
Not really (Score:1)
Hardware got more expensive.
That should be thanked to crypto and AI, both of which have driven GPu prices high. But also moving to more expensive EUV-based litography - and geopolitical situation that shut the door for alternative GPU makers from China (blocked from making chips outside of China).
I sincerely hope that current trend will turn around and Nvidia, AMD etc. get some proper run for their money as soon as Chinese catch up in litography.
If it were like it was back in the good old days.. (Score:2)
The median wage to median house price would be 1:3 instead of 1:6 and growing.
By contrast, a $70 AAA title is the equivalent of spending $35 or less when most of us were kids and AAA games were, bare minimum, $50 (many SNES were $60-$80 for bigger games).
Video game prices are not gouging anyone right now.
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> By contrast, a $70 AAA title is the equivalent of spending $35 or less when most of us were kids and AAA games were, bare minimum, $50 (many SNES were $60-$80 for bigger games).
> Video game prices are not gouging anyone right now.
And if games were an $80, one-time purchase, nothing-more-to-buy, multiplayer-over-TCP/IP-forever investment, yes, you're right. I have no problem paying even $100 for such a game.
Except most of them are not. There are a handful of exceptions (Elden Ring, Baulder's Gate 3, and so on), but the majority of games are $60-$80 for the standard edition but $100 or more for the deluxe edition, and then there are the season passes, battle passes, in-game purchases (they're not 'micro' anymore...), lootboxes, multip
Atari 2600 (Score:2)
1977: $190
2024 equivalent: $990
Not a fan of the comparisons (Score:2)
30 years ago the technology was ramping up much quicker than today meaning the next gen consoles from the competition was looked and played far superior.
Then you take into account the inflation adjusted cost for those new units, of course they had much more "room" to drop the price.. components probably got much cheaper and production efficiency gained. I use to manage component procurement for mass production, we'd expect our suppliers to get better cost efficiency each year after production began due
Just consoles? (Score:1, Insightful)
Today's EVERYTHING is overpriced.
Thanks, underregulated capitalism! And soon enough, tariffs will drive prices even higher. Thanks, Trump supporters!
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I'm not sure they're really overpriced.
Today's consoles are bespoke PC hardware, and in the context of equivalent hardware- they're really cheap.
I think the problem is that "console" gaming has changed. A lot.
A modern console needs to compete with a PC.
The Nintendo did not compete with contemporary PCs.
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> The Nintendo did not compete with contemporary PCs.
The NES had hardware sprites, 64-color graphics, and 5 sound channels, at a time when PCs had a monophonic beeping internal speaker, and no graphics mode with more than 16 colors.
Arcade games were still very much a thing, because no home system (except the Amiga, arguably) could match their graphics and sound.
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The price increases started a long time ago during the W administration when company boards realized they could make more money if they hired psychopaths to be their CEOs. Yes, seriously. The thing is, capitalism only works when your CEOs aren't psychopaths and have an actual conscience. Regarding Trump, I'll take an industrial job here vs one that has been offshored to China.
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This has absolutely nothing to do with unregulated capitalism. These tariffs really don't have anything at all to do with regulation, and everything to do with Trump a) punishing people he doesn't like at the moment and b) because he can.
Tariffs are TAXES. Trump's tariffs are straight-up, old-fashioned consumption taxes on the American consumer. Prices are higher because extra money is coming right out of Joe Mainstreet's pocket and into Uncle Sam's wallet.
General inflation is also playing a role,