Inflation adjusted price points of consoles in the US

Post by **Ivo** » Mon May 22, 2006 11:13 am

This might be interesting for people. Racket, consider linking it if you like it.

http://curmudgeongamer.com/2006/05/hist ... -aint.html

This is just raw data, interpretation is very much personal (I still think the PS3 is way too expensive, but apparently lots of Sony fanboys - erm... lots of people - disagreed in the comments section.

Ivo.

Post by **Conn** » Mon May 22, 2006 6:52 pm

Wouldn't a more interesting chart be showing how much an Atari 2600 would cost today, or a PS3 in the 80s? Inflation is pretty useless, in my opinion. Like Tycho said, it would be useful if I could buy it with money I used to have.

Post by **Ivo** » Tue May 23, 2006 4:50 am

Conn wrote:Wouldn't a more interesting chart be showing how much an Atari 2600 would cost today, or a PS3 in the 80s? Inflation is pretty useless, in my opinion. Like Tycho said, it would be useful if I could buy it with money I used to have.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean with "how much it would cost today", but I would assume that's pretty much what the 2nd chart shows: what an Atari 2600 would cost today, with its launch price adjusted to inflation.

As for what a PS3 would have cost in "80s" bucks, so to speak, I think it is just a question of doing the reverse calculation and work the inflation backwards to make it cheaper - although I think doing it the way he did is slightly more useful and makes the reverse calculation a bit superfluous (it won't really show any new info, just displays the comparison in a different way).

Ivo.

Post by **CurulleanCat** » Tue May 23, 2006 6:57 am

He forgot to include the Nintendo Wii maybe?

Post by **Ivo** » Tue May 23, 2006 8:26 am

CurulleanCat wrote:He forgot to include the Nintendo Wii maybe?

I would instead say that he doesn't know the price point it will retail at! Do you?

In any case, if you think it will be $200 (seems quite likely) then just picture a $200 tall bar on the rightmost part of the graph. You don't need to adjust it to inflation as it's a modern console.

Ivo.

Post by **CurulleanCat** » Tue May 23, 2006 4:21 pm

Ivo wrote:
CurulleanCat wrote:He forgot to include the Nintendo Wii maybe?
I would instead say that he doesn't know the price point it will retail at! Do you?

In any case, if you think it will be $200 (seems quite likely) then just picture a $200 tall bar on the rightmost part of the graph. You don't need to adjust it to inflation as it's a modern console.

Ivo.

I see the price of teh wii being more around 250-300. thats more than fair for nintendo.