There used to be game console price cut wars

A look back at a very different era of PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo, when at least two of the big three felt constant pressure to out-do the competition on price.

My old PS3 and Xbox 360. Photo: Game File

While I was recently researching 2025’s spate of video game industry price hikes, I dug into the long history of game console price cuts. And I wound up making a bad chart.

Chart-making is a skill, and sometimes it’s possible to screw it up. I do think I nail it sometimes.

But this time? No.

My idea—the one that looked great in my brain—was that I’d create a chart that would show how the video game consoles of yesteryear launched at specific prices that dropped over time, while the current generation of consoles has done the opposite. You’d see a bunch of lines representing prices for the likes of PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 drifting down year after year. You’d see some lines for Switch, PS5 and Xbox Series veering up.

This chart would confirm what we all know, but sometimes it helps to visualize.

It also helps to Google, and among the deficiencies of my chart idea was that it had recently been done. In August, Kyle Orland of Ars Technica published some charts showing old console prices going way down and new ones not doing that. (When Orland adjusted the prices for inflation, he found a gentle downward drift in price for most of the current console generation prior to 2025’s spikes, but nothing close to the steep drops seen for decades of consoles before that.)

Undeterred, I tweaked my idea and made a bad chart anyway. I will show it to you, because, peering at its ugly branches, I noticed a couple of things I found helpful to think about: how game console price cuts were complicated by the proliferation of PC-style hardware differentiation… and how console makers used to compete on price in a way they just don’t anymore.

Here’s the chart. Don’t expect for it to make sense at first glance (because it’s bad!)...