Data like this has been supplied by others before, but this is a particularly impressive charting of select console system prices over the years from the first programmable videogame system, the 1976 Fairchild Video Entertainment System (VES, later Channel F), to the latest to release pricing data, the 2006 Sony PlayStation 3. What I like about this is that two charts are supplied, one for the absolute retail prices and one for the inflation-adjusted prices. As I've argued elsewhere, while paying $60 for a game stinks, relatively speaking we've been paying that and more for countless years. Same thing with modern consoles. While it's a difficult pill to swallow a $600 PlayStation 3 (my recommendation is don't even look at the crippled $500 model), relatively speaking it's not so bad, particularly since it pulls additional duties as a hi-def media center.

Click here for the original post on "Curmudgeon Gamer" and the links to the two separate PDF files. Special thanks to Tyler Ortman, the editor of my upcoming videogame and computer history book, for the heads-up on this.