The plan is to wait for a price drop. $200 or less for Home Consoles. Until then I don't even consider it in the running. Usually demand dies down within the first year and console makers drop the price to spur demand.
Wii - Preordered, then picked up at launch. Yeah, this contradicts what I just said. But 1) my roomate was really interested in the Wii and was willing to split the cost with me at $125, w00t. Then my neighbor suggested we camp outside a Gamestop so we could get a preordered. Bless their lucky stars for convincing me to break my routine. I'd still be waiting for a pricedrop, lol!
DS - I waited about a year, right before Kirby Canvas Curse and Advance Wars DS came out. None of the games interested me before then.
GC - 6 months after launch. Nintendo quickly planted a pricedrop and I was still a Console Fanboy and avoided the PS2.
PS2 - 3.5 years after launch. Told ya I was a Fanboy. I bought it at a flea market with 2 controllers for $110. Sadly there it had the dreaded Disc Read Error. On the plus side I looked up how you could fix it (rotate this single gear 3/8 of the way? And Sony had to get sued to fix this? LOL) And I was in business.
GBA - 6 months after. Some good games popped up at launch and the backwards compatibility with my GBC library made it a no-brainer.
PS1 - 3 years after. The flea market...yeah good times.
N64 - 1 year after. My cousin and I split the cost.
There is no such thing as a console war. This is the first step to game design.
