The NES Classic Outsold the PS4, Xbox One, and Switch In June (theverge.com) 128
After returning to stores in June after a brief stint of sales back in 2016, the NES Classic is topping U.S. sales charts. Market research firm NPD reports that the NES Classic was June's highest unit-selling hardware platform in the U.S., beating the PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One. "The NES Classic managed to outsell these consoles despite only being on sale for a few days in late June," reports The Verge. From the report: While the NES Classic is priced at $59 compared to more expensive current-generation consoles, it's clearly still in demand 35 years after the original Nintendo Entertainment System debuted in 1983. The NES Classic comes loaded with 30 games including classics like Super Mario Bros., Metroid, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, and Pac-Man. While you can't insert vintage NES cartridges into it, the console supports game saves and connects to TVs via a HDMI cable. Nintendo hasn't revealed whether it now plans to introduce more miniature retro consoles.
It helps that it's $60 bucks (Score:5, Insightful)
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Something was clearly different this time around. When it first went on sale in 2016, it was actually impossible to get one anywhere. Even Amazon had problems with their site, as I recall.
This time I expected to again miss out. I woke up and had breakfast the day it went on sale back in June and then I decided to check out a few retailers just to see if there was a possibility to grab one. I managed to snag one (at the MSRP, not some absurd scalping rate) from BestBuy via their website.
Most of the games
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I woke up and had breakfast
Details missing: did you pee before or after the breakfast?
Re:It helps that it's $60 bucks (Score:4, Insightful)
Details missing: did you pee before or after the breakfast?
Joke's on you, the answer is "during".
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"Something was clearly different this time around. When it first went on sale in 2016, it was actually impossible to get one anywhere. Even Amazon had problems with their site, as I recall."
It's called starting the inventory this time around with over 10x the total consoles they sold during all of 2016. Amazing how having realistic supply to expected demand can be a game changer.
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Heck this time around I walked into the local Gamestop 3 days after it was released and bought one. It was the last one they had, but still, it was on the shelf a few days later.
Overall, I was happy. I want one for myself not to sell, but I didn't want one enough to pay more than normal MSRP.
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Huh...I guess I missed the announcement.
Probably because I stopped watching or caring about the NES or SNES after I built a retropie box...which was a revisit of the original Xbox I modded back in the day and still have. And by 'built' I mean 6 screws and copying some files to a SD card. It amazes me that people ever lined up for this when there have been viable, and frankly better, alternatives for a decade and more.
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That and the others systems have been out for a while now.
If anyone who is now considering getting an Xbox one, ps4 or a switch. Probably had their old system die on them, or their kid has reached an age the parents deemed OK for them to play video games.
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What makes the NES Classic Edition not "pathetic" is that it comes with authentic copies of notable* games. This distinguishes it from emulators on a Raspberry Pi 3 that do not. Either they don't come with games at all because they can't score any licenses, or they come with non-notable freeware like Thwaite and Nova the Squirrel and Gruniozerca 2.
* I use "notable" in Wikipedia's sense: significant coverage in three or more independent reliable sources [wikipedia.org].
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Nintendo can make its own iNES ROMs, TYVM (Score:3)
It has been discovered nintendo used the .nes format
Like the Zip format, the iNES format has no exclusive rights. It's just a 16-byte header that specifies how large the PRG ROM and CHR ROM are and how the rest of the hardware on the Game Pak's PCB is wired.
and very likely sources their roms from the already pirated versions
If Nintendo contracts a company to produce an emulator, and the emulator happens to accept iNES format ROM images as input, Nintendo can make its own ROM images in the correct format by dumping the ROM from Game Paks kept in its library in Redmond, Washington, and prepending a correctly constructed header
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It has been discovered nintendo used the .nes format, and very likely sources their roms from the already pirated versions.
Sure, seems very likely that they did. But it's important to note that it is not illegal to download something you already own the copyright to.
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You realize it's hared to buy a pre-built retropie WITHOUT being loaded with games than with??
I've even seen adds on FB for them. Yup, it's not legal but it's also trivial to do.
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I don't use Facebook. Does it have a way to report an ad on grounds "Hey, did Nintendo approve the inclusion of X, Y, and Z games?"
Re: 60 Dollar Novelty Item (Score:1)
Re: 60 Dollar Novelty Item (Score:2)
NES hit 62 million in 2004.
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let me know when they release The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for PC
Man, if only you could emulate it... oh wait. [cemu.info]
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But how do you dump an authentic copy of BotW from the Game Disc to your PC for use in Cemu? The official docs [cemu.info] say you need a Wii U anyway.
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authentic copy
Psst... try The Pirate Bay.
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If you really want to, no one is keeping you from buying the game AND getting the torrent.
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Skyrim is already available for PC and PlayStation 3. It runs playably even on Intel graphics all the way back to Ivy Bridge.
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I'd gladly pay $60 for that game, but I won't pay $360 for the game + a console that I'll only ever use for one game.
Wii U. Used they're about $115 for the base system from Gamestop - I grabbed mine for $85 from a pawn shop.
The Switch isn't some huge graphical leap over the Wii U and IMHO a used console plus the price of the game is well worth it for Breath of the Wild.
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Candy Land has been a popular game since 1949. It still beats fancier games in annual sales.
(I'd argue that it's not even a game, because there is no player decisions. but people treat it as if it were a game)
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The difference is the quality of games. No one who knows any better wants Xbox or PS4. You still have new good games but they come nearly exclusively from indie companies or outright individuals, who can't put their software on that PS4. Instead, they can do so on any open system. And I actually tested a $24 Pine64 with a $2.20 (!) joypad + USB extension cable (so it reaches the couch) on sister's TV so her kids can take a look at old good games. Then you have that HDMI output on an actual PC...
So yeah
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Of course the skillset you have would probably cost someone not having that skillset to spend $100 to pay someone long enough to turn a Pine64 into a retro gaming machine...
It's something that is very easy to take for granted.
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Exactly. Most people who frequent /. tend to forget that setting up an emulator on an SBC like a Pine64 or a Raspberry Pi isn't something most people off the street even know is possible, let alone feel able to do. People are paying $60 for having all of that setup and packaging done by Nintendo in a convenient fashion, so all they need to do is plug and play. I set up a Pi with Retropie a while back and it was a fun little project, but it also took some time to do the first time especially with tweaking
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It's braindead easy these days. THere's so many how-tos with pictures, tools, and all. You can build one with zero technical expertise.
Now, I do agree there's still some value in having it done for you. When you're in the sub-$100 range it's not a big deal +/- a few bucks to most people for something cool.
But from Nintendo's side where they have the economies of scale, $60 is a very healthy profit margin and even more so on the retro SNES for $100. I doubt their BOM is more than $20-25
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Use a PC then. Downloading an emulator and inserting that HDMI plug into the computer is a task anyone smarter than a $SPORT spectator can do. If all fails, ask a 10 years old kid for help.
If you managed to connect the real NES to the TV all those years ago, and know basics of operating a PC, you already have that skill set.
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That PC is going to be a lot more money than $60...
I'm skipping out on them too, because I'm not particularly sentimental about the cosmetic design, I have a high end HTPC that can do this and if I felt like it the capability of rolling my own with one of those cheap boards.
However, there's a large number of folks for whom it just makes since to plop down $60 and plug it in and forget it.
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That PC is going to be a lot more money than $60...
But it can be moved around, and if you're playing a game you're not using it otherwise. Yeah, doing so on a TV is hardly ever worth the bother to lug it around, except for probably social reasons. But a laptop is made for being moved, and I have yet to see a laptop without a monitor connector: VGA being dead, it's HDMI or mini-HDMI. It's probably just MacBooks that require an adapter from Lightning that, knowing Apple, costs north of $200, but it's often explicitly advertised as capable of doing that. H
Re: 60 Dollar Novelty Item (Score:2)
For Apple, itâ(TM)s HDMI, displayport, USB-C, or some combination of the three.
None of which are $200 and none of which are exotic compared to whatâ(TM)s on a Windows PC.
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Laptop that for most people goes to sleep when lid closed, so they have to leave it open (yes this is configurable, but again, speaking to 'plug and go' mindset).
They have to find a set of bluetooth or otherwise wireless controllers or get extension cords for wired controllers.. An xbox controller is around $40 by itself.
And you have to get the roms (of course by plugging your legitimate cartridges into a cartridge dumper, right???). Legally speaking for NES/SNES type games, you need a hard to find and ge
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An xbox controller is around $40 by itself.
What?!? Are you buying them in an iApple iStore?
A basic but well-made controller I have costed me 7.99PLN ($2.20) a few years ago. Fancy-schmancy controllers go for 15-18 ($4-$5). I understand that xbox might take an outrageous price for replacement parts that are made intentionally incompatible, but for PC or an ARM board you can use anything that connects with bog-standard USB.
And you have to get the roms (of course by plugging your legitimate cartridges into a cartridge dumper, right???).
You can find them on any ROM site, with the average person not even knowing the copyright mafia might have something against it
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You're looking at the past through rose-colored glasses.
For every Super Mario Bros. there was a Top Gun or Fester's Quest.
You can't compare ALL the game from current gen to the standout classics of old systems and say they're worse. Its why old things always seem better. In 15 years you'll look back to the current generation and rather than the hundreds of bad or mediocre titles you'll remember a couple dozen standout ones.
Re: 60 Dollar Novelty Item (Score:2)
80 million? Yawn...
Wake me up when the PS4 comes anywhere near the 150 million DS Nintendo sold.
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Technically, this NES Classic should be able to do the same. It's an ARM system with a stripped down emulator, there are no authentic NES chips in it nor is it a custom chip. It's basically an ODROID2/Raspberry Pi with the Nintendo flavor of Linux.
What you could do though is if you own this, you now own a license to the ROM for use on other emulators.
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And the NES Classic doesn't even have an officially sanctioned way to add more games.
Fixed it for you. But I agree that they should have made a sanctioned way and made money off of it.
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Windows 10 looks like something that's hacked together, most DEs for Linux look far more polished and professional now.
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Actually they are doing just that: the NES Classic is an ARM box that can play every game up to the first Playstation. See here for the details: snesclassicmods.com [snesclassicmods.com]. (The NES Classic and the SNES Classic has the same HW
Re:Obligatory reminder (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, I don't understand why people are excited about paying $60 for ...
Most people aren't techies and unlike you and I wouldn't enjoy actually getting the thing to work (and would probably take a lot longer to do it too).
The $60 allows them to relive the fun of an earlier era with zero fucking around. No finding ROMS or emulators or a suitable computer on which to run them, controllers a case and so on and so forth.
Re:Obligatory reminder (Score:5, Insightful)
This.
It's a convenience item. 60 bucks vs. tinkering and toying with emulators and roms 'til they work. Yes, that's part of the fun for some, for most it's just an inconvenient ordeal necessary to get to the fun. And if you spend more than 3 hours doing it, and if you have at least a halfway decent job, spending 60 bucks is actually cheaper for you since you could have worked those 3 hours and earned more than those 60 bucks if you don't get any joy out of tinkering with it anyway. Hell, depending on your job and how much you like it, you could get enjoyment out of working instead...
This is, by the way, also the reason people buy games instead of copying them. Copy protection, prosecution and whatever else you could field changes jack shit. Back in the days when I was poor, I copied games. Today, I buy them. Not because it's "the right thing to do" or some bullshit, but simply because I want to play the game and not toy with the game to make it work. Yes, that was fun when I was young (and I owe the skills I picked up back then that allows me to do my job today to copy protection, so... thank you, I guess?), but I don't have the time anymore. I want my stuff to work, preferably without having to jump a bunch of hoops first.
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You can do the same with a Pi or some other mini-computer. You just have to set up the software once, then you can easily take it anywhere just the same.
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And that setting up once already takes more time than I need to earn 60 bucks.
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But the result is a machine loaded with a fuckton of games, not a handful.
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That's like saying cable is better than OTA-TV because there's more channels. What good is 1000 games and all of them suck?
Let's not forget that the NES Library does contain a few gems, this is right. But also an incredible amount of really, really shitty games that aged terribly.
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But also an incredible amount of really, really shitty games that aged terribly.
I think Mega Drive and SNES had much better libraries (maybe smaller but more quality stuff). And you can't get any of that on a NES Classic.
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Yeah but this, you can buy, plug it in to the minivan's HDMI in port and hand it to your kids. Now your kids get to play the same games you played growing up. No tinkering required.
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But tinkering is part of the fun!
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right so you get a pi, then fuck around with software, get a case from somewhere and then find a suitable PSU. Then find some controllers. And the ROMs.
I like that kind of fuckery: I have an xarcade dual stick, mame and roms. I like setting it up and I like playing it. But I get it's not for everyone. You should too. 60 bucks saves several hours and 15 years experience and there is nothing wrong with that.
Also your sig: can you not? It serves nothing except deligitimising your point because you're misusin
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Better now?
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yep. Agree or disagree, it's a defensible point now.
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But I DO think of it as rape -- plus torture, mayhem, endangerment, organ theft, medical fraud, and sometimes even vampirism. It's a nasty package.
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But I DO think of it as rape
If you like, but it doesn't fit any commonly accepted definition of that. If you don't use words to mean what everyone else means by them then you will at best confuse people and at worst put people off from the message you're trying to convey.
plus torture,
sure
mayhem,
u wot
organ theft
I'd avoid that too. Kidnapping someone and stealing their kidney to implant in someone else is what most people have in mind by that. Plus you know I don't think the foreskin qualifies as an organ
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I've zero doubt that tons of doctors are sadist fucks who get a hard-on out of this. Circumcision fetishism is most definitely a thing. Therefore it's sexual assault. These days people call lots of things rape, but this one is not? Fuck that. So it's rape and torture.
Causing a permanently disfiguring or crippling injury - that's mayhem.
Circumcision can kill, it DOES kill, it's strongly linked to cot death - so it's endangerment.
Foreskins are sold to laboratories, for skin grafts or stem cells - so it's orga
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These days people call lots of things rape,
You need to (and I appreciate the irony of this) spend less time listening to idiots on the internet. No, "people" don't.
So it's rape and torture.
Look, bro, it's up to you. This is your fight, not mine. You can't logic people into paying atttention to you. If you give people the impression you're off the wall crazy before you've even got to the meat of your argument people are going to assume (quite logically) that you are indeed off the wall crazy and not listen.
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You can do the same with a Pi or some other mini-computer. You just have to set up the software once, then you can easily take it anywhere just the same.
This post explains why nerds get picked on by the cool kids...
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if you spend more than 3 hours doing it
What are you 'tinkering' with that takes 3 hours? Download the FCEUX binary and a rom pack, run the emulator .exe, spend a few seconds setting up your controller once and for all, and open the .nes file you want to play; Alt-Enter if you want fullscreen. Yes there are other settings you can fiddle with if you want to, but nothing that's required for basic functionality.
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Ok, now take the average non-Slashdot reader / non-tech. First of all, FCEUX doesn't mean anything to him. If anything, he'd probably start looking for some overnight delivery service or a new government legislation under that term. A "rom pack" sounds to him more like some high-alcoholic sixpack and I don't even want to know what the word "emulator" does in his brain.
Can I be there when you try to teach this person how to make that work? After 3 hours, you might have reached the point where this person is
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Your comparison is incomple: 60 bucks for a handful of NES games versus a few hours setting up a device to run thousands of games from multiple consoles.
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...provided you can still get those thousands of games [polygon.com]...
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Mmm... in this case, yes. But if the history of DRM in the more recent past is any indicator, the chance of having unwanted and potentially harmful software on your PC after installing a legit game is higher than from a copy...
Re: Obligatory reminder (Score:2)
Every emulator system I've used has had a menu system that is slow and painful to use.
I bought one of those. (Score:1, Interesting)
They are very dangerous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
New games? (Score:2)
Re: New games? (Score:2)
Original NES still getting new indie games (Score:2)
The NES Classic Edition isn't getting any new games (officially). It has no (Nintendo approved) update mechanism.
But the original Nintendo Entertainment System is getting plenty of new indie games. If you haven't heard of them, then perhaps the developers of platformers like Twin Dragons [kickstarter.com] and The Curse of Possum Hollow [3dcartstores.com] and Lizard [lizardnes.com] need to step up their advertising.
A Classic.... (Score:2)
Tetris is expensive to license (Score:3)
I don't see anything Nintendo could have done about it if The Tetris Company doesn't want Tetris included in large bundles anymore. When Nintendo originally announced Virtual Console for Wii, Tetris was one of the games it called out as too expensive to license (along with GoldenEye, whose rights at the time were split between Activision and Microsoft).
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Ironically as a result of the Tengen Tetris debacle on the original NES
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No, it's not Tetris is expensive to license. It's f'ing impossible to license. The modern rights to Tetris are held by the Tetris Company. But the rights int
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But now you want to include Tetris, you have to go and figure out who has the copyright on the code itself and see if they're around
If Nintendo had the rights, it would include its own version of Tetris, not the version produced by Tengen (now part of WB Games) when the licensing was still a mess. The credit screen for Nintendo's version of Tetris for NES and Tetris & Dr. Mario for Super NES lists only two copyright owners: Nintendo and Elorg. Based on my experiences in the Tetris fan scene from 2006 through roughly 2009, this leaves me with two likely possibilities:
A. The Tetris Company wants too much money per copy.
B. The Tetris C
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You will be sued, and you will lose.
Source: "US District Court: Game Elements In Tetris Clone Infringe Tetris Co.'s Copyright" (June 2012) [slashdot.org]
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There is nothing fun about having to redo everything you've done before.
Sure, if you could save before every jump and just insta-reload, that ruins the game. But at least staying on the same world, if not even the same level, or half-way map save-points (like almost all the Mario games) is a necessary part to ensure you're aren't playing 1-1 several thousand times to each time you get to the end.
Nintendo hard wasn't even that hard. You want hard, go load up ZX Spectrum games and arcade games. Literally,
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> Old arcade games are ludicrously hard too. They were deliberately so to make you put more money in. I've literally only ever completed one arcade game too, and that's because it cost a pittance by the time I played it and brother-and-I had about 50-continues worth of coins.
Arcade games where continues were allowed aren't really what I think of when someone says old games, as those came several years into the scene. And yes they were designed to extract as much money from you as possible. Gauntlet was
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There's a reason the NES Classic is popular indeed:
https://en-americas-support.ni... [nintendo.com]
Challenge is fine. Complete the whole game without ever turning the thing off or saving/loading isn't a challenge, any more than than just playing the game.
But the game is a game. To be played. And enjoyed. And though you might have to have a dozen shots at the tricky levels, there's no fun at all if you just stay on that level for ever and ever or (worse) only get one shot after hours of trawling your way back.
Any game
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every old console/PC game let you start again from the beginning if you ran out of lives.
I recall there was a very old PC game that actually deleted characters as they died. Only way to get them back was a fresh reinstall.
And more recently, Undertale did some interesting things around that concept. For example, if you kill a certain character, but try to start a new game... there's another character who still knows what you did. Murderer.
Never underestimate (Score:1)
The disposable income of aging Gen-X gamers.
It also helps with impulse buys in that it's a console that is closer to the price of a game (~$70) instead of $300 of a PS4.