The Dolphin's price: How to figure it Out
This was hard to do. Seriously, how do you determine how much a 2006 system would have cost in 2001. The answer: you don't. But you do make a few reasonable guesses.
For instance, let's take a look at the Wii. In 2006, it was launched with a fancy controller and a game. A standard controller, with a wire connection to the console and no special features, costs as little as $20, compared to the $60 a Wiimote/nunchuck combo will cost. Then you have the game, which usually costs $50 by itself. Combined, that's potentially $90 Nintendo could have cut off the price by selling the Wii with an old GameCube controller and no game. This insinuates that the value of the console itself was around $150 in 2006. This is very rough, but is an indicator.
Next, we compare this $150 system to the cost of other consoles at the time. The PS2 was $130. The GameCube was $100. The PS2 was 2.3 times that price in November 2001, and the GameCube 2 times. $150 times 2 is $300, and times 2.3 is about 350. So logically, the Wii hardware would have cost about $300 to $350 in 2001, right?
Wrong! You're forgetting the cost of memory. That's right, Sony's old Vita trick is back. And memory was expensive back then. 256 MB could cost about $50 in 2001, a few times more than just a few years later. Even a 8 MB memory card could cost $20. Adding them to the system's cost would make the Dolphin cost from $320 to a whopping $400. And considering how Nintendo hates to make a loss on their systems... Besides, the Wii, and thus the Dolphin, is significantly more powerful than the Xbox, which launched at $300. A notably higher price is reasonable.
"But Salnax, who the hell would release a game console for $400 in 2001?"
Adjusted for inflation, it's still cheaper than the PS3 was in 2006, even for the cheaper models. And according to my little history, the Dolphin's life trajectory is essentially a scaled down version of the PS3's, taking years to get into its stride, and with the help of many price cuts.
Anyhow, that's just some of the thinking I did.
Love and tolerate.
