now that you mentioned that....Devs can make money from ingame advertisements and stuff. That makes a lot of sense but you give people the oppotunity and they could start calling the Developers corporatists and sellouts. With the DLCs I dont know, people always complain about that and do DLCs really sell that well? You still have people accussing these developers of cutting content from the original game to sell as DLCs. Remember back in the day when we had unlockable items and content like if you finish the game you get two extra chapters or storylines as in Resident Evil 4. That was awesome. If that came as a DLC today...gamers are so used to those types of extra stuff...

The thing is, back then, everything unlockable and such had to be in the game when it shipped, you couldn't download addons or patches, you were stuck with what shipped and that was that, so that content was planned and executed from the begining.

Now they finish games, and it's cheaper to earn additional money by producing DLC content for the existing game than it is to build a new one, problem is, depending on the timing, people see it as a cash grab and say it should have been there on the disk and not paid.

In a way theyre right but at the same time, theyre paying less for the game than they used to, it kinda pans out.

Also for the PC gamers, be thankful you can buy extra storage for cheap, back in the day your options were limited to things like this.

3.5K for 10 megabyte.

3DO was USD700 at launch.And the way things are going consoles will be more expensive than PCs in 10 years.

I (well my dad, lol) paid $90 for Super Mario Bros. 3 when it came out.

Pretty much all the N64 launch titles were $70-$80 a pop too outside of Mario 64 which was $60.

Yeah things like $20-$25 used games ... hah, good luck. That didn't exist either. It's why game rentals at Blockbuster in the 90s was pretty much a must. 

The system was cheap but the games were expensive back in the day before CD took over.

Nintendo really was out of their mind to go cart-only ... at least do cart + CDs like the Saturn had at least the ability to do. That way Miyamoto could have his Mario 64 without loading times and every other developer could have the CD medium they wanted and consumers wouldn't be stuck with $70 games. 

Looks alright to me. Games and consoles(like any newer hardware) have never been cheap

As I have been saying for years, AS AN ECONOMIST, this is the WORST POSSIBLE WAY of comparing prices over the years. Unfortunately those half baked learnt practices catch on very qucikly and you will hardly ever see such misleading comparisons used by economists.

The inflation adjusted prices are only good for GENERAL PRICES. For example, if you want to calculate the COST OF LIVING back in the day, then yes go ahead, and use CPI-based inflation adjusted figures. But if you want to calculate an INDUSTRY SPECIFIC figure, then you also have to use INDUSTRY SPECIFIC Price Index, which means the Inflation for the IT industry specifically.

Given all that, we know the price levels in the IT sector has been generally decreasing. Computers are (even nominally) cheaper than ever. This goes for PCs, Laptops, Tablets, Smart phones and pretty much everything else EXCEPT GAME CONSOLES. So the RELATIVE price of game consoles have been steadily increasing, which is admittedly because they have been evolving into more capable and PC-like machines.

In 1996, Playstation cost you $299 while an average laptop cost you north of $1500  (so the console was less 20% of a laptop)

In 2014, Playstation costs you $399 while an average laptop costs you around $600 (giving you about a 70% ratio)

Although the figures above are not precise, in general, console gaming has become RELATIVELY much more expensive over the years. I wanna emphasize the term "RELATIVE" here becuase when people make purchasing decisions, they always make comparisons and evaluate based on the second best alternative. Consoles in the past was particularly common because they were way cheaper. Today this is not a convincing reason anymore; but rather taken over by CONVENIENCE as the biggest reason behind console use as an alternative to PCs.

As a note, if you want to make an absolute analysis and don't want to deal with industry specific data, then another reasonable way is to compare it with the MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME LEVELS. Given that we take the nominal consoles prices, we also have to use the nominal income levels.

In 1996 : 50 percentile HH Income : $35 883  (in 2012 dollars, $ 52 289)

In 2012 : 50 percentile HH Income : $52 173

Playstation 1's relative price in 1996 =  299 / 35 883 = 0.833% of income

Playstation 4's relative price in 2013 =  399 / 52 173 = 0.765% of income (approximated with 2012)

So the price relative to the income has slightly dropped by 8% ( 0.765 / 0.833 = 92%)

In Summary, the game consoles, in real terms, have slightly decreased in price by around 8%, although their relative price has increased up to 4 times as 1996 prices. In plain english, they cost you slightly less now, but much cheaper alternatives have appeared and all of sudden, consoles started to look way more expensive.

And there you have it, the consoles and games now are cheaper than they used to be, while the prices of PC and PC hardware has decreased SIGNIFICANTLY as technology has matured and improved too.

All in all, in the past, things were significantly more expensive than they are now.

Third party developers flocked to the cheaper CD based PS1 over expensive cartridges on the N64. PS1 went on to sell over 100 million consoles, N64 struggled towards 34 million console sales. Using cartridges was a huge mistake for Nintendo instead of adopting CDs. CDs are much cheaper and have better load and memory storage capacities over the now defunct cartridges. Cartridges main benefits over CDs are: they are impossible to pirate and cartridges are more durable than easy to break/scratch CDs.

I hate when people bring up inflation.

If I was making $10 an hour back when I bought an N64 and am still making $10 an hour today. The N64 was cheaper. Inflation means nothing. It's all relative to the individuals income.

If you were making $10 in 1996 and are still making $10 an hour at the same job in 2014, you've got bigger issues than how much you're paying for consoles, namely legal ones.
Peoples income has increased since 1996 to match the inflation, so yes, it does mean something.