Expensive games: consoles made of gold. The most expensive gadgets and electronic devices

A gaming console can give a sea of ​​emotions to absolutely anyone. Even ardent opponents computer games Having picked up a gamepad, they willingly and enthusiastically play shooters, strategies, and races. Choice console type directly depends not only on your financial capabilities, but also on what game genres you prefer. Do you want more sports, cars, alien monsters or a variety of simulators - your way to the ranks of owners Xbox. If you love all kinds of hacks, fights, battles, fights (and further along the list of epithets), treasure hunting and overcoming dangers - focus on consoles Sony. Of course, this division is very arbitrary, to the extent that you can run in “FIFA 19” on the PlayStation, and on Xbox One shoot Call Of Duty. Some advantage Microsoft consoles Provides backward compatibility with games released for previous generations of Xbox. Plus in favor of the PlayStation - a richer selection of exclusives. Only a really large TV will allow you to experience the beauty of 4K. Don't forget that it must be able to reproduce high dynamic range (HDR10).

Finally, unpretentious retro consoles They are also quite capable of delivering a lot of positive emotions to older gamers and are a good option for a gaming console for children.

Happy shopping!

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Don't complain that game consoles are expensive. There were times when they asked for much more. Our top most expensive consoles, taking into account inflation, will tell you what sacrifices gamers of the recent past made in order to get their hands on the coveted box.

Panasonic 3DO (1993)

• Original price: $700
• Price adjusted for inflation: $1160

1993, the whole world is playing on Sega Mega Drive and Super Nintendo, the “Dandy” era is in full swing in Russia. Then a mega-stylish, sophisticated, like Michael Bay’s Transformer, powerful, like Kevin Sorbo’s Hercules and attractive, like the eyes of a beauty in her youth, 32-bit Panasonic 3DO appears on the market. In some ways ahead of its time, equipped with a CD drive and with a couple of superhit exclusives (TV series Need for Speed originated precisely on this platform, by the way), it, however, failed to conquer the market and failed miserably. Largely, I think, because of the high price tag.

Neo-Geo (1991)

• Original price: $649
• Price adjusted for inflation: $1147

SNK released its console for a select few in 1991. It cost $649, which, taking into account inflation, translates into a fabulous $1,142. And then the children’s parents were offered to buy cartridges for 200 bucks apiece (what would it be like to buy games for 12,000 rubles). There were almost no takers.

Philips CD-i (1991)

• Original price: $700
• Price adjusted for inflation: $1230

Philips is certainly a good company and there is a demand for its products. But when in 1991 she suddenly decided to enter the game console market by releasing CD-i for 700 bucks, there were no queues at the stores. Everyone was scared by the crazy price tag and the terrible selection of games. Yes, the most creepy games The series Legend of Zelda in history. But collectors are now really hunting for them.

Sega Saturn (1995)

• Original price: $399
• Price adjusted for inflation: $630

The wonderful, stylish, very mature Sega Saturn, which, moreover, had some technical advantages over the PlayStation, at first, despite the high price tag (the PlayStation was a hundred bucks cheaper), competed with Sony's brainchild. But in the end it faded away quite quickly; Sega began developing the Dreamcast.

PlayStation 3 (2006)

• Original price: $499/S599
• Price adjusted for inflation: $600/$715

The last truly console console from Sony with an original architecture and interesting technical solutions not from the PC world. The high price tag was largely due to the technical complexity of the system. Probably due to its high cost, the PlayStation 3 started at the tail end of the Xbox 360.

Intellivision (1980)

• Original price: $299
• Price adjusted for inflation: $870

Deeds of days gone by, a legend of deep antiquity. Intellivision console from the Mesozoic era gaming industry, a victim of the gaming apocalypse of 1983, when all the top platform holders at that time (Atari, Caleco) left the market.

Atari 2600 (1979)

• Original price: $199
• Price adjusted for inflation: $790

The first successful (with a circulation of more than 40,000,000 copies) cartridge-based game console in history. Its glory was great until the gaming industry crisis occurred in 1983, which crippled all the main platform holders of those times.

Actually, the rest of the consoles can’t be called too expensive, except that the Xbox One at launch cost $500. Below we publish a summary table with the price tags of set-top boxes.

Which is better - consoles or PC? This battle will continue until last days humanity. The canonical point of view is this: consoles are cheap, but then you will go broke on games. A PC, on the contrary, is difficult to assemble (financially), but later sales of the All-Merciful Gaben will help you save money. What if Gmbox told you that consoles can be prohibitively expensive too? Now the companies have already settled into a rut, and there are only 3 of them left, but before, experiments with pricing policy were very bold.

Panasonic 3DO

The Japanese company released its system to the market back in 1993. The first pancake did NOT turn out to be lumpy: Panasonic was really cool. He could boast of a library great games: Star Control 2, Po’Ed, Space Hulk... And CDs were new after the dominance of cartridges. However, the price spoiled everything. $700 at the start - adjusted for inflation today it turns out to be $1160! It's no surprise that Nintendo's budget rival was able to corner the 3DO and quietly strangle it there.

Neo Geo

The SNK console debuted in 1991, and its cost then was $650. We convert it to today's money and get $1142. And these colossal costs were just the beginning of a nightmare for parents (or independent gamers). Because each Neo Geo cartridge cost $200. More than 3 times more expensive than modern console new products! Did they make these cartridges from platinum? From kryptonite? From extinct dinosaurs? Even in the West, Neo Geo could only be played “with friends”: no one had their own console. And in Russia it is listed in the Red Book.

Sega Saturn

Sega stayed on 16-bit almost the longest, sucking all the juice out of this outdated format like a ruthless corporate vampire. Finally, in 1995, the company released the 32-bit Sega Saturn. Gamers were happy until they saw the $400 price tag. By that time, the company’s reputation was already tarnished: many gamers were upset because they had to buy a Genesis upgrade (even in Russia there were some problems with the fact that some cartridges for the Sega Megadrive II did not fit on the Megadrive). Frankly weak ports of Primal Rage and Virtua Fighter completed the job begun at a high price: players turned away from Sega and rushed into the arms of Sony and Nintendo. The company stopped supporting the Saturn in '98, just three years into its life cycle.

Turbo Duo

Today the Japanese company NEC is remembered only for its monitors, but it once produced set-top boxes. However, its Turbo Grafx-16 lagged behind both the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo in popularity. Sorry, Neanderthal Bonk, but the public likes the blue hedgehog and the mushroom plumber more than you! Instead of quietly killing the failing system, NEC bolted a CD-ROM onto it (without any graphics power upgrade) and reintroduced it to the market with a new name - Turbo Duo - and a new price tag: $300. He completely disappointed gamers.

Philips CD-i

The European concern tried to compete with the almighty Japanese, and it was a complete failure. In 1991, Philips released, in fact, a computer (without a hard drive!) for a TV. And he supplied it with a fantastic price tag of 700 dollars, which is 1230 adjusted for inflation. CD-i had some of the most terrible games in the history of the global gaming industry. Nintendo licensed three Zelda games to Philips. In gaming slang, these opuses are called the “Unholy Trinity”: it’s hard to imagine such disgusting crafts. To this day, Nintendo tries not to advertise this shameful fact of its biography.

PlayStation 3

Yes, everyone’s favorite PS3 was not liked at first. Those who bought it a couple of years before the end of the cycle probably do not understand what this is connected with. But the fact is that at the start of sales, a set-top box with a 60 Gb hard drive cost as much as $600! Sony made excuses: they say, you pay so much for an ultra-modern, unparalleled Blu-Ray. But even then it was clear to the general public: Blu-Ray is for perfectionist snobs, and HD DVD quality is enough for a normal person. It was the high price of the PS3 that contributed to the wild success of the Nintendo Wii, which cost only $250.

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It’s a sin today to complain that retailers are asking a fabulous amount of money for a game console. If we take into account the inflation rate, then at the top of the ranking most expensive game consoles turns out to be far from the consoles we originally thought about. We decided to take a desperate step and tried to create a similar rating. How much did they cost gaming consoles before and with what efforts did gamers achieve the coveted console? All this is in our material today.

Atari 2600 (1979)

Let's go back to 1979. But already in those days the gaming industry began to gain momentum. It was in this year that the first game console on cartridges was presented, which received worldwide success - Atari 2600. The release of the console was limited to only 40 million copies, although the demand for it was great until 1983, which became a crisis for platform companies and the world economy as a whole.

• Initial cost: $200
• Cost adjusted for inflation: $800

Intellivision (1980)

We haven't forgotten about Intellivision game console, which is considered the progenitor of all consoles, despite the Atari described above. This model suffered the same fate - the 1983 crisis, which crippled a number of top companies.

• Initial cost: $300
• Cost adjusted for inflation: $880

Philips CD-i (1991)

Many of you probably couldn’t even imagine that, to this day, the well-known company Philips was engaged in the production of game consoles. Unfortunately, despite the quality of its products, it failed to gain popularity in the gaming industry. Entering the gaming console market with a product called CD-i, the company scared off potential customers with an unrealistic price by those standards - $700. Moreover, the selection of games was terrible. Horrible, in the literal sense of the word - the most terrible series of games was released for the console The Legend of Zelda. By the way, this series of games is very valuable among collectors (if you don’t value it, then by selling it you can earn a decent amount of money).

• Initial cost: $700
• Cost adjusted for inflation: $1240

Neo Geo (1991)

In 1991, the SNK company released a game console for the elite (you will understand why the “chosen ones” yourself). If the original cost ($650) is calculated taking into account inflation, it comes out to $1,250. It was okay to spend money once, but I had to buy cartridges that cost $200 apiece. By today's standards, this is approximately 12 thousand rubles. While we were writing the material, we weren’t lazy and went to the PlayStation Store - even they don’t have those prices! In general, those who want to buy a console, Neo Geo for such a price, there was practically none.

• Initial cost: $650
• Cost adjusted for inflation: $1250

Panasonic 3DO (1993)

Remember those times when everyone played Super Nintendo or Sega Mega Drive in every apartment. The Dendy game console was popular in our area. In 1993, a stylish - by the standards of those times, sophisticated, powerful like the Core i7 today and beautiful game console - entered the market. Panasonic 3DO 32 bit. Nostalgia. This console was perhaps ahead of its time. After all, releasing a console with a CD drive is a very bold step. By the way, the first series was released for this console Games Need for Speed, which has become an all-time cult classic. Despite such a high-profile story, the console could not take root, and its release was a failure. Most likely the reason was its high cost.

• Initial cost: $700
• Cost adjusted for inflation: $1170

Sega Saturn (1995)

After the success of the Sega Mega Drive in 1995, game consoles entered the market Sega Saturn. For some time, it was even technically superior to PlayStation, which was its main competitor. The price was actually $100 more expensive than Sony. The competition didn't last long as Sega decided to start developing the Dreamcast.

• Initial cost: $400
• Cost adjusted for inflation: $640

PlayStation 3 (2006)

The only one presented is a “real” game console developed by Sony, having an original architecture and technical solutions, other than PC. The technical complexity of the system determined the high cost of the set-top box. Most likely due to the high price PlayStation 3 began to gain popularity while in the shadow of the Xbox 360.

• Initial cost: $500/$600
• Cost adjusted for inflation: $610/$725

That's basically all we found from the list of the most expensive ones. Alas, even now the PlayStation 4 Pro or Xbox One, which seem very expensive, are not. The latter really started its story at $500 apiece. In the end, we decided to publish a list containing price tags for popular consoles.

Name	Year of issue	Original cost	Price adjusted for inflation
Magnavox Odyssey	1972	$99	$570.44
Atari 2600	1977	$199	$790.92
Intellivision	1980	$299	$873.97
ColecoVision	1982	$175	$436.78
Atari 5200	1982	$269	$671.39
NES	1985	$199	$445.44
Sega Master System	1986	$199	$437.32
TurboGrafx-16	1989	$199	$386.53
Sega Genesis	1989	$189	$367.11
Neo Geo	1991	$649	$1147.68
SNES	1991	$199	$351.91
3DO	1993	$699	$1165.10
Atari Jaguar	1993	$249	$440.33
PlayStation	1995	$299	$472.54
Sega Saturn	1995	$399	$630.58
Nintendo 64	1996	$199	$305.48
Dreamcast	1999	$199	$287.69
PlayStation 2	2000	$299	$418.21
GameCube	2001	$199	$270.64
Xbox	2001	$299	$406.63
Xbox 360	2005	$299/$399	$368.74/$492.07
Wii	2006	$249	$297.48
PlayStation 3	2006	$499/$599	$596.16/$715.63
Wii U	2012	$299/$349	$313.66/$366.11
PlayStation 4	2013	$399	$412.52
Xbox One	2013	$499	$515.91
PlayStation 4 Pro	2016	$399	$399
Nintendo Switch	2017	$299	$299