Video games have always cost the same, even back in the 90s big budget games cost $60. But $60 in 1990 is $148.73 today. So video games have in fact only gotten cheaper over the years.
Video games have always cost the same, even back in the 90s big budget games cost $60. But $60 in 1990 is $148.73 today. So video games have in fact only gotten cheaper over the years.
They were fairly substantial.
Consider the SHVC-BA3M-10, which is the PCB used for Super Metroid. Some of what’s on there are commodity parts, such as the MS6264CLL (an 8k SRAM chip).
Hard to track down exact prices from 1994, but we can get close. A Jaemco catalog from 1994 lists a series of SRAM chips on page 15. Per the datasheet above, we’re looking for regular (not fast) SRAM in an 8x8k configuration. Those are listed in the neighborhood of $4 each, though bulk pricing would reduce that.
Doesn’t sound like much? Consider that a good rule of thumb for pricing hardware is 2.5x cost of goods sold. So even if we assume $4 becomes $3 in bulk, we’re still looking at $7.50 added to the retail cost. That’s for just one chip, and it’s probably not the most expensive one on there.