Should consoles cost $500+ ?

[greenmedic88]

Teeqoz said:

Soundwave said:
Yeah I think so.

People don't realize inflation is a thing, the NES which launched in 1986 would be over $400 for the standard SKU inflation adjusted.

Expecting hardware to stay $200-$300 forever is simply not realistic, you can't buy a bag of chips or a Pepsi or a Big Mac for the same price today as you could in 1986, why do you expect video game consoles to stay the same price?

Pretty much this. The same applies to games as well. AAA games should honestly retail at 75$ by now.

I seem to recall paying $50 for NES cartridges back in the 80s, so definitely. 

N64 carts had to resort to doing the whole variable price thing based upon memory/size of game due to the cost of ROM ICs in the 90s, but that was an anomaly as the industry had moved to inexpensive optical discs by that point. 

There was a minor uproar over 7th gen games being priced at $60, but given the rising costs of development for "HD" games, it was far from unreasonable.

Of course rising development budgets mean the publisher is projecting higher unit sales unless being managed by financeers who have no idea what they're doing. 

Games with small markets or low projected demand/sales should have their development budgets adjusted accordingly, which is more or less what the entire mobile market and to a lesser extent, the indy market lives by.