On April 2nd, Nintendo revealed a wealth of information about the Nintendo Switch 2, which will arrive in early June. Video game enthusiasts discovered that the price tag was, for many, much higher than expected. As this decision continues to fuel debate online, we decided to take a look back at some of the most expensive consoles in history. Watch out, it's going to be a bumpy ride!
Long considered a leisure activity for children and teenagers, to the point where many consoles were found in the toy section, video games took a 180-degree turn with the advent of the PlayStation in the mid-1990s.
This democratization, combined with increasingly dizzying technological costs, has transformed the medium into a veritable industry, generating billions of dollars each year. One might think that this rise in power has coincided with increasingly high prices, but each period has had its share of "luxury" machines.
Sony's move upmarket
Released a few months ago, the machine that symbolizes, on its own, the move to another price dimension is none other than the PlayStation 5 Pro. Modeled on the less imposing design of the slim model of the PlayStation 5, this ultra-boosted version of the original incorporates technology that shows great promise. In addition to its memory, which offers 28% more speed, the console has a GPU designed for tomorrow's productions. Designed to display games in 4K and 60 frames per second, Sony's protégé integrates ray-tracing as well as PSSR, PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, allowing it to upscale the image without any loss of quality.
It's all a bit technical, but that explains the price of this machine at its launch. It's likely to be one of the most expensive consoles in history for a long time, especially since we just learned, at the time of writing, that Sony was increasing the price of the PS5 Digital Edition by an additional 50 euros. A PS5 Pro at more than 799 euros in the near future? It's not impossible...
Times have changed, but Sony has already found itself in an uncomfortable situation, to the point of having to backtrack on pricing. It was a few years ago, of course, but the PlayStation 3 remains a milestone in the history of video games. Although very promising and eagerly awaited by hordes of fans of the brand, its announcement in 2006 was accompanied by a price tag that remains in everyone's memory: 599 euros.
Faced with the Xbox 360, a true masterstroke from Microsoft, the machine experienced a complicated first few years, due to a limited launch catalog and studios that struggled to harness its power. The PlayStation 3 was a financial drain for Sony. Shuhei Yoshida, former president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios, even recently explained that the company lost a million dollars during this period. It eventually recovered thanks to exceptional games (Uncharted 2, The Last of Us, Killzone 2, God of War III, etc.) and a price that was readjusted to suit the markets.
The home arcade (really) has a cost
Reading the last few lines, one might think that price increases in the console market are only very recent, but the 1990s also had their share of expensive machines. And in this area, there is one that has left an indelible mark: the Neo Geo. A transposition of a real arcade card for living rooms, this console from SNK allowed you to find, at home, the same games that you could find on coffee machines.
Nicknamed the Rolls-Royce of consoles, this machine was infinitely more powerful than a Mega Drive or a Super Nintendo. Very few people were able to access it at the time, due to an investment that was unattainable for many families. In France, you could find it for 3,490 francs, or 945 euros of our current euros with inflation, and you had to add games that were also very expensive. It's simple, for a single title, you had to pay between 1,000 and 1,500 francs (around 270 to 405 euros). And sometimes much more. The Neo Geo was a great console, but it was truly reserved for an elite. SNK did try to offer less expensive models with CD-ROMs, but loading times and less power meant that the original arcade games were lacking.
Among the other manufacturers that tried to bring arcade games to the home, we obviously found Sega with the Saturn. Packing no fewer than eight processors and initially designed for 2D, the console weathered multiple storms before reaching the market. Faced with a less expensive and easier-to-master PlayStation, the Saturn arrived with the promise of bringing arcade games to the living room with minimal visual loss. Offered with the famous 3D fighting game, Virtua Fighter, it unfortunately arrived in France with a pricing policy that scared off the various European branches of the company.
Where SEGA has always strived to offer a fair price, the Saturn appeared in stores at a price of 3,390 francs, which represents 822 euros today! The pack including Virtua Fighter was even the only one available during the first months before the company deigned to offer the bare console at a revised price. We'll give you a thousand guesses, faced with a PlayStation at 2,099 francs (around 510 euros), SEGA reacted very quickly, but the damage was done and the competitor's catalog then propelled the latter to the roof of the world.
Multimedia, the bait that empties your wallet
With the Neo Geo, we thought we had seen it all, but we were not at the end of our surprises. Around 1993, the call of the CD-ROM became more and more pressing and many manufacturers considered the use of optical media, either through extensions like the Mega CD for the Mega Drive, or by integrating a CD player into the very heart of future consoles. Trip Hawkins, the founder of Electronic Arts, decided to embark on a new adventure. He chose to create his company 3DO with the idea of reshaping the video game market. The interested party wants to change the principle of selling consoles at a loss to make money from game sales. His goal is to offer a machine, the 3DO, to several manufacturers who can then produce their own model. In short, patent his technology.
Trip Hawkins also has another trick: asking for only three dollars in royalties from publishers who release games on the 3DO. We'll give you a thousand guesses: this machine is going to be a real flop, due to a very poor catalog (despite some enjoyable games, like Road Rash, Need for Speed, and FIFA). It will only arrive late in France and will be offered as a bundle with FIFA at a price of 2,990 francs (in 1995, that's equivalent to 725 euros of our current euros with inflation) for the Goldstar model. Too bad, the bet was worth it.
We could find other examples of expensive consoles, but this clearly shows that video games, depending on the machine you choose, can represent a considerable investment. With a Nintendo Switch 2 at 499 euros (with Mario Kart World in dematerialized version), and knowing that Nintendo has often been among those who offered cheap machines, we are perhaps experiencing a price break. Time will tell if the price of 500 euros is now the gateway to the world of video games.
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