Perhaps the latest games consoles are not so expensive? http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/xbox-one-and-ps4-launch-price-compared The SNK Neo-Geo (1990) works out as having the highest adjust price at £1155.99 or about $1781.
That's one way of recalcuating prices. If you look at it based on the launch cost as a percentage of the average wage, it's a slightly different story in terms of pricing. I've calculated the costs based on the percentage of the average living cost of the launch year, and recalulated based on the 2012 UK average wage figure (£26,500 according to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20442666). Code: Odyssey £ 937 Atari 2600 £ 990 Intellivision £1,458 NES £ 783 MegaDrive £ 568 Neo-Geo £1,499 SNES £ 374 CD-I £1,276 3DO £1,170 Jaguar £ 532 Saturn £ 718 PlayStation £ 616 N64 £ 480 Dreamcast £ 351 PS2 £ 480 Gamecube £ 197 Xbox £ 456 Xbox 360 £ 367 PS3 £ 532 Wii £ 224
How many had their home illegally foreclosed upon and garbed up by greedy bankers in that year? How many lost everything they had saved just 5 years before that launch? How many Engineers and teachers were working for Minimum wages at McDonald's and Walmart? It's a changed world and that seems to have been over looked in the calculation. IMHO
In which case, you probably purchased it at over the odds, as my experience with CEX seem to be fairly poor in the pricing for pre-loved stuff.
It was in great condition, all things in the box never had any issue with it! I also bought my second wireless controler from them and its working great after fixing the battery plastic case when a shitty battery leaked. All good.
I have never bought a console, but I had a Playstation 1 back in college. I would go rent games from Warehouse, but honestly there really wasn't a lot of games that I liked. So I ended up playing music on it most of the time because I didn't have a CD player. Before that my stepfather bought a Super Nintendo when I was in high school. It had a few good games, but nothing I kept for a long time. These days consoles are WAY more powerful and almost the same as PC's. You don't have to upgrade the hardware and all the games magically work, but thats about the only benefit I can see. I can still do a lot more with a computer and almost all of my games work anyways.... So I would rather spend a few hundred dollars every 5 years than buy a new console.
