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Classic Games (Games)

A Look Back At Expensive System Launches 81

Posted by Zonk from the i-want-a-pdp dept.
As the launch for the Xbox 360 approaches, with incredibly expensive bundles up for offer, Joystiq takes a look back at expensive system launches of the past. From the article: "Commodore 64 - $1207.04 (originally valued at $595 in 1982) Despite being the most popular computer model of all time, selling between 17 and 25 million units, the Commodore 64 was a relatively expensive games machine by today's standards. However, it offered extremely good value for money by offering unprecedented sound and graphics quality."
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A Look Back At Expensive System Launches More

A Look Back At Expensive System Launches

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  • what about my Atari 1200XL? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jim_redwagon ( 845837 ) on Monday August 29, 2005 @01:39PM (#13428760) Journal
    i spent many an early '80s morning trudging through the snow delivering papers to come up with the $1,200 for it and it's external cassette drive!

  • Not quite... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Krater76 ( 810350 ) on Monday August 29, 2005 @01:41PM (#13428771) Journal
    The Apple II and C64 were not game machines. They were home computers that could be used to play games. I had a C64c growing up and my sister and I typed out all of my school stuff with it. My dad did spreadsheets for work.

    Comparing the XBox 360 with the Commodore 64/Apple II is stupid. They aren't comparing the 360 vs. my home computer even though it plays games. Why? Because then their stupid article won't be taken seriously by the 16-year-olds who have never even seen an Apple II.

    I'm waiting for the XBox 360 vs. graphing calculator articles. "The 360 is expensive but a great grpahing calculator can cost a fair amount of money. And really aren't all 3D games just complex math anyways?!"
    • Interesting point. In my opinion, gaming devices (consoles, PCs, handhelds) are too expensive. I'm gonna pick up an XBOX when the XBOX 360 comes out. 70-90 bucks used sounds pretty reasonable to me.
    • Wow, someone's forgetting that the XBOX is essentially a PC stuffed in a plastic box.

      The Commodore/Amiga computers were games machines, at the time that's the only possible reason such graphical and audio capabilities would have been built into them.
      • The Amiga was much more than a games machine. The developers vision was to create a supreme audio, graphics and multi-tasking computer. When Commodore purchased it, they wanted a games machine. So, it became both, but it was an amazing computer for its time. (I use an 60MHz Amiga 2000 to this day.)

        • Re:Not quite... (Score:3, Interesting)

          by sanosuke76 ( 887630 )
          Heh, and we Amiga users tend to stick together. I landed my sysadmin job partly on the basis of putting the Amiga on my resume. Another sysadmin saw it and went, "Ah, this guy probably knows his stuff!"

          [cue whooshing sounds] The Amiga - an elegant system, from a more civilized age.
      • One could say the same about a Playstation 2, or a Gamecube, as well. What makes a device a PC exactly? Is it the hardware that it ships with, or added after market? Is it the OS? Is it functional design?

        Linux has been ported to the Playstation 2 AND the GC. The PS2 even supports USB keyboard devices.

        Amigas and Commodores were personal computers that could also play games. The current and next-gen consoles are gaming machines that will have other functionality as well.

        • Re:Not quite... (Score:3, Informative)

          by stoborrobots ( 577882 )
          I believe his point was that the XBox is essentially an x86-based computer, based on an architecture originally known as "IBM compatible", now commonly described as a "PC", and differentiated from machine architectures commonly described as "Macs", "mainframes" "Sparc boxen", etc.

          Yeah, other machine types make perfectly usable general-purpose boxes, after some tweaking. That doesn't change the fact that in todays world, people call x86 machines "PCs".
      • The difference between a game console and multi purpose computer (not just PCs) is how it is primarily used. Once someone is using a PS2, Gamecube or XBox to generate scenes for major motion picture, or are otherwise used by more than just developers for primarily none game playing purposes, then they can be considered something other than a game console. The C64 was a PC, designed from the ground up to do more than play games. It had exceptional graphics and sound for the time to give it adittional sell
        • Once someone is using a PS2 ... for primarily non game playing purposes, then they can be considered something other than a game console.

          Ahem... *cough* [uiuc.edu]
          • Once someone is using a PS2, Gamecube or XBox to generate scenes for major motion picture, or are otherwise used by more than just developers for primarily none game playing purposes, then they can be considered something other than a game console.

            I like how you cut out the important part of the sentence. It was that particular project (and any other programmer experiment) that I was being sure to exclude in my statement.
      • This is ridiculous, he's making a completely valid point and you're claiming the complete opposite.

        The Amiga was often used for far more than just gaming - for the cost it was great for musicians or artists to work with AND OR play games on the system.

        Also the C64 games could be developed .... ON A C64, - you don't see many Xbox games actually developed on the system itself with a controller now do you?

        They are BOTH personal computers, the Xbox can be a fcking super computer "stuffed in a plastic box" it's
      • The high end (at the time of course) audio visual capabilities were part of the Amiga not just because they were required for kick ass games, but more specifically because the Amiga was intended to be a full on multimedia producing system.

        The Amiga was heavily used in broadcast and video production - without that superior audio and visual capability provided by the Amiga that would not have been possible without much more money.
    • "...just complex math..."

      And linear algebra, and calculus, and logic....

    • Uh, did you notice that they also listed the PDP-1 [pdp-1.org] on which the first video game [sympatico.ca] was developed. At $0.75 million, that was hardly a "game machine" either -- as the author was surely aware. The whole thing is tongue-in-cheek [wikipedia.org].

    • Re:Not quite... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Blakey Rat ( 99501 ) on Monday August 29, 2005 @04:20PM (#13430249)
      Ok, let's take a look:

      The C-64 has two Atari-compatible joystick ports.

      The C-64 has a cartridge port, for instantly loading applications. (Like, hmm, games.)

      The C-64 has 8 hardware sprites.

      The C-64 has 4 (I believe) sound channels.

      The C-64 has enough horsepower for pixel-perfect ports of popular games at the time, like Zaxxon, Pac-Man, Q-Bert, etc.

      The C-64 is capable of plugging into a TV set and using it as a monitor.

      The C-64 has a 320x240 resolution screen with 16 colors.

      If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it's a duck. Face it, the Commodore 64 is a video game console that also happens to be able to run some non-game applications.

      If it were designed as a computer first, it would have loaded an OS off disk like a IBM PC, it would have emphasized text on the display instead of graphics (probably monochrome, but relatively high-res) like a PC, it would have had one sound channel to save costs for things that a computer user at the time wouldn't need, it wouldn't have had joystick ports or a cartridge slot.

      • Re:Not quite... (Score:3, Informative)

        by ip_vjl ( 410654 )
        I had an Atari 800XL.

        Of the list you mentioned, The 800XL had:
        joystick ports, cartridge port, sprites (p/m graphics), 4 sound channels, plugged into a TV, 320x240 8 bit (sort-of) color.

        Yet, that aside, I would consider the 800XL a computer. The 5200 (which was internally very much the same) was a game console.

        The difference. The 5200 really couldn't be used for much else (I suppose it could have if somebody really wanted to hack it) whereas the 800 series computers were very adept at it.

        Let's look at that l
      • Commodore is also known as the CBM 64, which stands for "Commodore Business Machines".

        It did load an OS off a disk and that was GEOS, which was packaged with the computer in the late eighties and was much better than Windows 1.0/2.0.

        Actually 320x200 _was_ hi-res mode, and was used for desktop publishing, spreadsheets and other graphical applications. Coupled with a dot-matrix printer, a peripheral never available to consoles.

        A console is a device which has hardware components entirel
        • Thank you, I'm glad someone get's it. My orginal post was to show that the C64 had significant features that were used for more than just games and therefore can't be considered a game machine.

          It's funny that you mention GEOS because when I finally got another computer, a 486, it had Win3.1 on it. I thought at the time that it was really just GEOS but on a better PC.
    • Not to insult the commodore, but it's more like comparing the xbox to an emachine, a cheap and affordable computer. In fact, the 360 will cost more expensive than said machine.
    • No, the C64 was most definitely a game machine first. It just happened to have a keyboard and a smattering of productivity software.
  • What do these comparisons prove? I mean, two consoles that failed because of their price, two desktop computers and a freaking PDP-1?
    • Somebody buying a PDP-1 to play Space War would probably be the penultimate definition of the term "rich kid".

  • C64 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Monday August 29, 2005 @01:48PM (#13428828) Journal
    I used the C64 for the longest time, the only reason I had to upgrade was for 80 column displays. Upgrading to a 128D gave me a couple more years of service, I could BBS at full screen, and work on papers.

    Even when I got the Amiga, 80 column display and ANSI color wasnt perfected in terminal applications. Finally switching to a 486.

    I use to goto the Spokane commodore users group, and seen people still using a c64 for reading news, writing news letters with spell checkers. Was cool to see how these old classic computers where still going strong. The only problem I ever had with the C64 was Floppy disk allignment, suckers would always get out of allignment.

    Great little computer for its day.

    • Re:C64 (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I use to goto the Spokane commodore users group

      Look who still can't shake their BASIC programming days out of their head.

    • Re:C64 (Score:3, Interesting)

      by wayne606 ( 211893 )
      A while back there was a C64-in-a-joystick sold for something like $25 on QVC, of all places... I got one and it plays a lot of old games (stored in ROM) just fine ... Makes you wonder what the 2025 retro versions of today's high powered and expensive boxes are going to look like.

  • Article Summary (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cybermage ( 112274 ) * on Monday August 29, 2005 @01:49PM (#13428840) Homepage Journal
    Relatively speaking, technology gets both better and cheaper over time.
  • I don't know why everyone is making such a big deal about the xb360 bundles. Most consumers are just going to buy the core system and 1-2 games anyway.
    Also the bundles arn't that expensive when you compare to previous console launches. By the time you buy all the add ons and games you want for any system, you would easily spend more than even the cost of these bundles.
    The bundles are directed at the more hardcore gamers, who have no problems buying a lot up front.
    • Besides, I have to wonder how many of the games in these bundles will even be out by the time the buyer go to pick them up. I can see it now:

      They'll bring the moving truck to get their 360 and all it's titles, and they'll leave with one big box, two or three games and several hundred dollars returned for games that had their release dates pushed back until february! ;)
      </sardonicglee>
    • The problem is when the store refuses to sell anything other than the overpriced bundles, which has happened in the past.

      For years, I refused to buy certain brands of automobiles because their dealers used similar methods to boost their profits, and acted like they were doing you a favor by allowing you to buy one of their automobiles at an inflated price.

      • The FTC classify "Switch and Bait" as refusing to sell you something that is available in the Ad. What the stores can do is have only 1 xbox360 core, and have it purposely sold out.

        They can legally then say they ran out of supplies and sucker you into paying for the expensive bundle. Which they will probably stock 50+ units of. It's too early to make a judgment we don't know how they are boxed.

        • No, usually they don't advertise the console without bundle at all, they advertise and sell only the bundle.
        • he FTC classify "Switch and Bait" as refusing to sell you something that is available in the Ad. What the stores can do is have only 1 xbox360 core, and have it purposely sold out.

          They can legally then say they ran out of supplies and sucker you into paying for the expensive bundle.

          No, they can't. A store has to have a "reasonable quantity" of stock on hand for any advertised product. Reasonable quantity is defined as a quantity expected to meet demand.

          You cannot have 1 unit of something on hand, advertis
    • That's the problem with this article. The Xbox bundles they are refering to are not the core and "premium" core bundles being offered by Microsoft, but the rediculous bundles being offered by EB and GameStop with several additional games, controllers, and other miscellaneous accessories for hundreds of dollars more. I don't think the pricing of any of the "systems" on the list in the article are for bundles like that.

      The big epiphany here though is that most of the systems on their list, save for the Neo-G

  • That sounds about right. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by djSpinMonkey ( 816614 ) on Monday August 29, 2005 @01:59PM (#13428910) Homepage
    Article summary: Historically, people have happily paid X-Box 360 prices for "gaming systems" that were actually multi-purpose computers. Sure, you could play Adventure or Breakout on them, but you could also do your taxes. Pure video game console systems at similar price points, however, have flopped. (Actually, though, looking at the historical chart at the end, the Atari 2600 seems to be an exception.)
    • Except that the NES was originally $300 according to the list. I'm fairly sure the Sega Genesis was $300 too until the SNES gave it competition. Those are $500 and $400 prices in today's dollars. But today's videogame market is much larger, no doubt in part thanks to declining console prices.

  • Neo Geo (Score:4, Informative)

    by dogbowl ( 75870 ) on Monday August 29, 2005 @02:02PM (#13428938) Homepage
    How can anybody write about expensive video game systems and NOT mention the Neo Geo. In the early 90's, that sucker had *games* selling in the multiple of hundreds of dollars. It was the king of the hill in terms of $$$s (until the 360 came along)

    And also, I don't think its fair to compare a video game console with full blown computers from the past.

    • Re:Neo Geo (Score:3, Funny)

      by dogbowl ( 75870 )
      well, its there now. Must have been added afterwards, I guess..

  • C64? Try VIC-20 (Score:4, Informative)

    by Red Flayer ( 890720 ) on Monday August 29, 2005 @02:03PM (#13428940) Journal
    A much better comparison would be the Vic-20 by Commodore.

    The C64 was a home computer; the VIC-20 was a console computer. It was primarily used to play games, although it did have word-processing capability (though limited to 22 chars per line), etc. Its display was typically a TV, and IIRC, it came with a joystick.

    Price at retail launch (Jan 1981) was $299, which is approximately $610 in today's dollars, making it about the same as the Xbox 360.

    Of course, GTA4 in ANSI just doesn't seem as appealing.
    • Heh. Maybe you didn't have the Optional 16K RAM expansion pack for your Vic20. :) I did, and used it to write my first programs.

      We had several games for it, some of them on tape, but the best ones were the cartridge-based games that plugged into the back. We had a clone of Q*bert that was quite fun.
      • I didn't have the VIC20, I had the PET2001; the PET2001 had about 20k RAM if I remember clearly, and that's where I learned to code (well, learned to code BASIC, anyway). However, the PET2001 did not have color, nor the graphics capabilities of the VIC20. The PET2001 was the direct precursor to the C64.

        When we got the PET2001, floppy disks were not available. So, lots of tape cassettes... I scoff at people who complain about 15 second load times today.

        Telengard, by Avalon Hill, had a load time of abo
        • Telengard, by Avalon Hill, had a load time of about 15 minutes... so I feel your pain :)

          Longest tape load time I can recall was "Manic Miner" on my c64 - took about 25 minutes to load. The best games were the ones with Invadaload on them - a really neat, light space-invaders clone you could play while the tape was spooling.

          Ah, memories!
    • which is approximately $610 in today's dollars, making it about the same as the Xbox 360.

      Stop posting this misinformation. The suggested retail price of the most expensive Xbox 360 package is $399.99, despite what the Microsoft-hating hordes on this site want you to believe. It doesn't cost $610.
      • MSRP and what it will actually cost you are two different things.

        Yes, there is some FUD about retail price... but going from experience, there is no way I'll be able to get an XBox 360 at a retail store without buying a bundled package at release... which will probably cost me $600.

        It's not MS that will be setting retail price, it's the retailers. And you can bet your sweet A that they'll be forcing bundles on us.
        • you cannot wait a few weeks/months? you've been waiting all these years... surely you can forego a few more days.

          it's only at launch and ALL consoles are way overpriced in the begining, especially due to the artificial scarcity introduced by the manufacturers.
          • I didn't say that I found the price unacceptable. My original post just pointed out that the price of the VIC20 at release was similar to the price of the XBox 360 at release, dollars adjusted.

  • My view (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rAiNsT0rm ( 877553 ) on Monday August 29, 2005 @02:06PM (#13428959) Homepage
    The best I can compare this launch to is the Neo Geo launch and games. Uber expensive system that brought unrivaled GRAPHICS into the home. The system was largely a failure overall. The 360 and PS3 are both Graphical powerhouses, but graphics alone fall flat in the face of limited releases and poor gameplay/design.

    The "Gee-Whiz" factor of eye-candy is fairly powerful, but slow release schedules and high prices have historically been killers. The fact that the underlying accessibility and gameplay needs to be top-notch as well cannot be overlooked and nothing so far seems to be bringing anything new to the table.

    With the average bundle cost hovering around $600 and the fact that most stores will be selling in bundle-only format, I actually predict that the sales will not match the PS2/Xbox/GC releases. I think there will be a lot of hype, and a lot of die-hard fanboy sales, but I just don't see either of these systems capturing the average game market in any meaningful way. And once the slow release schedule becomes apparent the sales numbers are going to drop off quite briskly. The only unknown in this launch is the Revolution, and I am keeping a keen eye for what it's future holds.
    • the fact that most stores will be selling in bundle-only format

      I would like to think that retailers would have learned from the overpriced bundle disaster that was the PSP launch and one more upcoming failure that people don't want any electronic device enough to be forced to buy a bunch of other crap they don't want with it.

      If there aren't stores selling Xbox 360s in a non-bundle format on release day, I predict a large stockpile of them in the cases of every Wal-Mart waiting to be bought a week after laun

      • Re:My view (Score:2, Insightful)

        by rAiNsT0rm ( 877553 )
        Ahh, but you are are part of the wise minority of game console buyers. Older, smarter, wiser gamers know exactly this... but we are not the intended market for these systems. These are flashy, eye-candy, status consoles with no real gaming soul. Hell even Sony has been trying hard to say that the PS3 is NOT a game console.

        If you haven't kept up almost every retailer is selling the 360 as a bundle only. The profit margins on the console itself are so razor thin and there is too much competition so retailers
  • The Pioneer LaserActive was freaking expensive when it came out (main unit around $700). I think it was more than the 3D0. The add on modules for the Genesis or TG-16 cost more than the original systems were running at the time. I think the LaserActive counts as a game system. It had laser disk games that you couldn't play on anything else at the time.

    http://darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com/console/laser. h tm [psxfanatics.com]
  • Commodore 64 - $1207.04 (originally valued at $595

    Wow...do things cost twice as much as they did in 1982 on average? It seems so hard to believe, the way prices sneak up on you, but then when I think of the particulars, what I pay for a candy bar or soda, what I've heard houses go for, what a paperback book costs...I guess I have to believe it.

    • Re:inflation (Score:2, Informative)

      by Prophet of Nixon ( 842081 )
      Paparback books have gone up in price 3x since I was a kid (I started buying them around 1988, if I recall they were roughly $2.50). Of course, a few years before they had been half that price.
      • Yeah, sometimes it's tough picking an item to track inflation with, because other factors can interfere...I wouldn't be shocked if paperback books are a declining market. Or some other issue interfering, or just people being greedy jerks.

        And then somethings, like computer equipment...well, I'd say advances in technolgy have balanced inflation pretty well in the case of the C=64...$600 is a fair price for a computer system these days as well.

        • Re:inflation (Score:3, Interesting)

          by NeMon'ess ( 160583 )
          In 1990 vending machines sold Coke for fifty cents. Was it even less in 1982? Movie ticket prices have more than doubled. Car prices kinda have, but perhaps the quality and durability of them have doubled?

  • Consumer Confidence (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I sit back and read all the posts concerning the pricing options of the 360 and possible future consoles and wonder why this did not occur to the same degree in the last round of releases. I would say that the current state of the economy as compared to the days of the previous releases tells part of the tale. We simply were in better shape in early 2000 and people had more flexible spending cash. Its true that the economy has recovered from the dismal state it was in around 2003, but with rising gas prices

  • Can we stop with all the 'Xbox 360 is expensive, but that's okay by me' articles? So what. The bundles are ridiculous. Big deal. Don't buy 'em. The premium/non-core system costs 100 dollars more than the original Xbox, which didn't come with Component cables, a remote, a wireless controller, or a headset. Big deal.

    Walk into a Gamestop and preorder an Xbox 360 without any bundling or having to preorder any games if you don't like the online bundles. It's really easy, I promise. I did it on Saturday without

  • 3DO (Score:2, Insightful)

    by alan_dershowitz ( 586542 )
    OK, the winner here has to be the 3DO, launching at like EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLARS. It would have been a ripoff if it had retailed at 50.

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