While I think the article is mostly a demonstration on how uninformed typical buyers can be, I do think there is an argument that there is a lot of gouging in the price of accessories; and a level of hiding the true ownership cost of consoles by increasing the number of accessories people have to buy.
This might have changed, neither the XBox 360 Core/Arcade nor the PS3 came with cables to hook your HD console to your HDTV to get a HD signal. Controllers have (roughly) doubled in price in a generation, and the cost of games has increased on the HD consoles. There is a noticeable increase in the amount of for-pay downloadable content which would have been included in a game as it shipped a couple of years ago. And all three console manufacturers expect their owners to buy additional/upgraded control schemes to the ones they have already released.
Even though I understand why the market it this way, I can understand the frustration of the common man who bought a PS2 for $200 with 2 controllers, a memory card and a couple of games (and was good to go) who now goes out to buy any of the consoles and is spending so much more; and a large portion of the expense seems to be the companies nickle and diming them.
While I'm certain it wouldn't excite the dedicated gamer, a company could probably do fairly well if they released a console from launch with 2 controllers, 2 games, and everything needed to hook it up (and use all the extra features) and advertised it with no more hidden costs.
Essay Pro