In my anectdotal example it would be closer to 5% anual inflation from 1990 to 2014. So I would get closer to a $500 console from $200 in 1996. Looks right on the money actually!

Average inflation is useless for these things anyway. From that site I linked the price of meat went up five fold since 1990.
Compared to groceries, consoles are cheaper nowdays. Compared to other luxury items they are more expensive.

Different times, I used to get 5.5 % on a savings account, and I remember mortages being as high as 14%, now I'm happy when I get 1.2% and mortagages are as low as 3%.

Without inflation, In 2000 I paid 44.43 euros (99.95 guilders) for a PC game, today they are 49.99. Too lazy to find older ones :)

It is the norm because they think they need to drive a brand new car that they really can't afford, pay $100/mo for a phone (that didn't exist in 1996), have a super fancy TV, and go out to eat with their friends 2 times a week at expensive restaurants, not to mention not work throughout college, so they have just obscene student loan payments they have to make.

Inflation has not been anywhere close to a 7% average since 1996. If you are seriously trying to argue that my buying power is equivalent to $16,000 in 1996 for my job, then I don't know what else to tell you, other than that is an absolute joke. I mean good god, that would only be about $13,000 after taxes of 20%. The average home sold for about $140,000, so assuming a $110,000 loan at 8% (the going rate) would have run $9600 per year alone (60% of pretax income). In other words, I would have never been able to buy a home at my starting salary.

An average home nowadays is $270,000, meaning $220,000 loan at 4.5% will run $13,500 per year, or 26% of income. I've got a budget, and I could definitely fit that in, despite having expenses such as a cell phone that I wouldn't have had in 1996.

You pansies and your "American" pricing. I still remember Sonic 3D Blast costing 80 dollars. Over a 100 for Super Street Fighter 2 for snes (80 for genesis). Renting made sense back then.

I couldn't imagine paying 80$ for an 5 hour long 2D 8bit platforming side scroller.

We've come a long way as an industry. We can thank our lucky stars Nintendo lost against PS1 because that era was determinant on how the rest of this industry would play out

Your meat prices have gone up five-fold? I pay $3/lb for 90/10 hamburger (everyday price). I know for a fact 90/10 hamburger wasn't $.60/lb in 1990. I'd also say pretty consistently that prices listed in the indexes used arent even close to what I pay...ever...for anything. Sure, if I went to my local store and bought a single pound of hamburger without a sale, I'd probably pay the $4.50 that people claim hamburger costs. I just go buy 5 lb packs at Sams Club for $15.

I'd even go as far as to argue I could probably consistently eat food (and be healthy) and have a grocery bill that wasn't even close to double (that would indicate 3% inflation) what it would have been in 1990. Pretty much any fruit for lunch would be about 0% inflation since 1990. I actually pay less or the same for milk now than what it cost in 1990. Eggs run about the same as they were in 1990. A lot of vegetables (for supper side) have had just about 0% inflation since 1990. Even if my meat for supper has went up three fold, the overall bill for the day would not be even double.

"Different times, I used to get 5.5 % on a savings account, and I remember mortages being as high as 14%, now I'm happy when I get 1.2% and mortagages are as low as 3%." - but interest rates are not inflation, i.e. the expansion of the money supply.

It's much less on http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?ap, from $1.91 to $3.90
http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/70yearsofpricechange.html states $0.91 in 1990, now $4.68
Where I live fresh ground beef currently costs ~ CAD 11 per kg,  CAD 4.95 per pound.

I don't remember how much it was in 1990, I lived in a different country with a currency that doesn't exist anymore, hard to compare. Ofcourse now I'm buying for 4 people instead of 1, that's inflation :)

I love reading the descriptions of the game consoles, snes is described as, ''super 16bit realistic graphics'', I love the snes/genesis graphics for their time, but realistic was the furthest thing it was

Even without inflation gaming was just more expensive back in the 90s. Gaming has actually gotten cheaper. I bought games that were anywhere from $60 to $80 back then on a summer job income as a teenager. Or rented games.

And while the mainstream systems may have cost less when they launched there were other systems, Neo-Geo and CD-I for instance, that went for as much (or more) as the PS3 did.

Today's gamers have it made.

Depends how honest you were back then. There was hardly any drm, Amiga 500 and PC copy parties were a regular thing where I grew up. Bring a box of empty 3.5" disks and some games, go home with a ton of new games. C64 all you needed was a dual cassette deck. I did not start buying games until I was 18, been gaming since I was 6.

It has become cheaper, I do remember one store shamelessly asking 100 Euros for import Nintendo games.
The Amiga 500 started at $699 in 1991 btw, pc prices were in the $3000-$4000 range.