Interesting Article posted up by Ars Technica. It compares the prices of the current Xbox One / Playstation 4 compared to all previous consules. Taking into account inflation on the US Dollar so the prices are in 'real terms'. It seems the Xbox One is only $24 more expensive than the Xbox 360 Pro price at launch, and considering it comes with Kinect as standard now thats not too bad. Playstation 4 is the real winner, its console is launching $297 cheaper than the Playstation 3. My conclusion: It shows that the Xbox One isnt expensively priced as people make out, espically considering the Kinect camera is pretty high spec'ed and expensive to make. However it also shows Sony has made a massive price cut compared to its older consoles to try and win the market over. However as it's missing the Move Camera, your likely to see few games take advantage of those features as they can't guarantee everyone will have one (rumours around the internet is the camera was going to be included with the PS4, but they took it out last minute to reduce the overall cost). However will that really bother the hardcore gamers? Unlikely. Your thoughts? Full Article on Ars Technica: Are the PS4 and Xbox One really that expensive, historically? | Ars Technica
I think that's an interesting view on it. If you factor in the recession however i'm willing to bet a lot of people who were in work around 2005 / 2006 when the 360 launched are probably not earning that much more money now, compared to back then. The cost of living has gone up significantly, yet wages haven't increased nearly as much to cover this. So you could argue a lot of people have less money now compared to back when the 360 launched. If you factor all that in the £150 extra the Xbox One costs over the Xbox 360 is a big difference. I know the general opinion is amongst people i know is the Xbox One is just too expensive to justify purchasing at the current price, a couple of people have said if it was £100 cheaper it would be a lot easier to conceder getting one at launch.