Doesn't matter how rudimentary the controller were back then, they still cost $X amount to make.

I guarantee they are marking up the controllers price MORE today than they did back then.  IF they made $15 profit a controller back then.  They are probably making $30 profit a controller today.  They are marking the controllers up more.  

And bring up inflation all  you want.  There are millions of gamers that have DEAD-END jobs and these increased prices they notice.  I highly doubt people making $50,000+ a year give a shit about the price of gaming.  

It's the people at the dead end jobs 10 year ago still at those jobs thinking "man the contorllers used to cost only $25 compared to $60 now.  Or systems are $100 more now, or games $10 more or whatever"  The prices of all these things went up, yet the person income didn't increase one bit.  

Cost of production has increased, profit from controller sales has more or less stayed the same because of the cost of components and production, and because back in 1996, manufacturing costs were higher for what would now be much cheaper to make.

Yes but you see, much like you yourself have admitted, the people of today complaining about the increased prices, were not working and buying consoles in 1996.

The people that were, understand completely. The whole issue complaining about prices and failing, completely, to understand WHY they're numerically higher, but not actually financially higher, are almost always people who were not the ones paying the money out in the days of the PS1/N64, after all, you don't feel the impact in your wallet if Santa brought you it on christmas day.

What you need to grasp is, regardless of whether or not people accept that the prices have actually fallen either because they have dead end jobs or because they can't get their heads around the concept of inflation, the facts clearly show that they have.

If you can, without pointing at 'dead end jobs', show me a gamer that was working and paying for their consoles in 1996, that is working the same job today, and being paid the exact same as they were in 1996, and you'll have a point, until then you don't.

If you have to point towards dead end jobs to get your point across, you're completely ignoring the very reason they are called dead end jobs.

Your the one who refered to them as dead-end jobs.

I brought them up because they represented high-school and college kids wages.  Most high-school and College kids make roughly $10/hr if they have a job or less.  Are they not gamers? Are they not the ones buying consoles.  I bought the Wii, 360 and PS3 when I was in college and was only making $10/hr when I was working.

My cousins as I said currently make the same and they need to buy a PS4 or some other system/s of choice.  

It's not the largest year span being only like 10 years.  But I asked older lifeguards when i started and it had been $10/hr for as long as theyr emember, so i'm assuming for a long time typical HS/College kids make roughly that.  And thus those aged kids BUYING consoles from N64 era had to also save up money.  They only had to work 20-30 hours, versus todays kid having to work 30-40 hours depending on the console of choice.  

I'm not talking about dead end job guys who have been working at Walmart for 40 years.  I'm talking about an AGE group of people who when they are 16-22 they are making like $10/hr.  To them the console price has increased, games have increased, controllers have increased, online gaming, ect.  All new prices or more.  

Sure those teenagers grow up and make real money later on, but that age demographic (which most seem to equate to gamers) are stuck at the measly $10/hr paygrade.  

I can't make it any more clearer to you.

If a jobs maximum wage is the same now as it was in 1996, the jobs maximum pay has gotten worse.
Conversely, if a kid was making $10 an hour in 1996, they were actually being paid very well.

Again, the maximum wage for the job SHOULD have increased over the years, because it hasn't, the job's pay has gotten worse, $10 an hour in 1996 would be the same as earning $14.66 now, earning $10 an hour now, would be the same as earning $6.82 in 1996.

The cost of consoles has not increased, the value of the dollar has decreased, because they have not adjusted the maximum wage, the employer has in actual fact, REDUCED THE MAXIMUM WAGE.

Because they haven't adjusted along with inflation, while your cousin is only getting $10 now, if you had the same job in 1996 you would have been getting $14.66 by todays standards.

I'll try and make it as clear as possible in one line.
JUST BECAUSE A PERSON EARNED $10 AN HOUR 10 YEARS AGO DOES NOT MEAN THEY EARNED THE SAME AS YOU 10 YEARS LATER.

Look at it another way, I had a great grandfather in the US, he still remembers the days of being paid $30 a week for 60 hours work, if employers had all done the same as the lifeguards employers, and not increased pay rates to match inflation, he would still be earning $30 a week for 60 hours work, while kids sit around complaining about being on 'just' $10 an hour. Yes it's on the extreme side of examples but just because the difference isn't as great between 1996 and 2014 does not mean there isn't one.

Again, the price of games and consoles has not increased, the value of the dollar has decreased because of inflation.
$1 now would barely get you a soda, in 1996 $1 would have easilly gotten you two, because the dollar was WORTH MORE in 1996. ($1.47 to be exact)

Your bringing in other factors again. Doesn't matter how much a pop costs or whatever else.

We are talking solely video game consoles.

I can tell you 10 years ago i did not feel like I was getting paid good at $10 an hour. It was shit pay. It is still shit pay today.

But doesn't matter again whether it was good pay back then or good pay now, or bad pay then or now. What matters is that the average pay for the age demographic of 16-22 has been $10/hr for 20 years.

Meanwhile the cost of consoles or gaming in general has increased by a fair amount in that time.

It doesn't matter how many pops a kid could buy 20 years ago, this is about video games. A post was shown before that was written very well on how horribile inflation arguments are. In that argument there was one point talked about and that was the industry relativity. EVERYTHING technology wise has decreased by a fair amoutn over the years (except Apple, jk, even those rediculous prices are cheaper than before) but the video game sector has not only NOT decreased but increased in most all areas.

Bullshit.

http://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage/chart.htm
https://ycharts.com/indicators/average_hourly_earnings
http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=773&count=all

The numerical cost of just about everything has increased over the past 20 years, it's called inflation.
Comparing IT industry costs to console gaming is wrong, so wrong i didn't even bother replying to him, PC tech was sky high because it was new grounds, consoles at the same were extremely simple by comparison, as the complexity of consoles increased, and the production costs for PC's fell what you see is the prices for consoles and PC's becoming smaller and smaller as consoles get more complex and PC's get cheaper to produce.
"a pc costs $500 now and a console costs almost the same, but in 1980 a pc cost $6000 and a console cost $300, CONSOLES COST MORE NOW!" is an extremely narrow minded, and frankly, retarded way of looking at it.

Since you seem to want to ignore the facts and any modcrum of reality to support your flawed argument, i'm done with discussing it with you.

what are you bullshitting?  My average pay of $10/hr

I'm basing that on my area and what all my friends made, what kids that age currently make on average.  (have cousins and younger siblings to use as base).  Looking at what my older siblings or cousins made before me.

For all our non-skilled jobs we have had it has been roughly $10/hr for the last 15-20 years.  

Bring up all the stats over teh whole U.S. you want.  For my area and kids in that non-skilled age they were making $10/hr in 1996 and are making $10/hr today in 2014.  Thus to those kids buying consoles they are more expensive now.  They require more hours of work to save up th emoney to buy the console.  

Bottom line is this... consoles were cheaper in the early-mid 90s than today even after inflation (plus you got two controllers and a pack-in AAA game for $199 or less for both the SNES and Genesis back in the day), but software was much, MUCH more expensive even without adjusting for inflation, mainly due to the lack of MSRP standards in the industry at the time...

Look at the price of Genesis games in this consumer catlog circa '91... those aren't misprints:  $98.88 for both Toe Jam & Earl and Strider.

Check out these NES prices from the same year...

Who's up for paying $65 for Mario 3, The Little Mermaid, the original Final Fantasy and Star Tropics???

Indeed, but as games are generally a multi-time purchase per platform, and the console a one time (hopefully) purchase, as a whole, gaming in the past was substantially more expensive than it is today.

This video clip says it all..
Kid shows off his NES collection, at the time it was supposed to be jaw dropping how many he has (97 nes games), in this day and age someone having 97 games is like "lol is that all?"

What are you using as a reference for inflation?

In New Zealand PS4 is cheaper today then PS2 was when it launched, and that's without an inflation adjustment. When PS2 launched here is was about $1000. PS4 at launch was $650. I don't know what PS1 was when it launched. I was oblivious to consoles in 1996.