Ben Thompson at Stratechery has a great post on the state of the console video gaming market. In his post he has this chart (which Statista adapted for us).
As you can see, the price of a PC has fallen, significantly through the years. And yet, the price of a gaming console has risen. Why is this? Thompson speculates, "Incumbents are driven by their best customers to add more and more features that drive up the price, causing the incumbents’ product to move further and further away from the average customer’s needs."
As the price goes up, it becomes less appealing. One of the great things about Nintendo in the 80s was that it was an affordable computing device. These things are no longer relatively affordable.
Thompson thinks this odd dynamic is going to create an opening for Apple to make an Apple TV that is a great gaming machine. If Apple can keep its low price for the Apple TV, and add games, it can be a smash hit that takes over the living room and really hurts the established video game companies.
Go read more at Stratechery >
