The Story Of Video Game Costs: The 4-Bit Years
If you own a video game system or have bought a console for your kids, you know that they cost a pretty penny. You buy the system, you buy games, you buy controllers, and it all adds up.. Sure, you don’t have to pay lots of money to enjoy playing simple games, like the free games for kids you find online, but if you’re looking for a deeply involving gaming experience, you’re going to have to shell out hundreds of dollars. It may seem like prices are out of control, but when you put them in historical perspective, they’re not all that bad. Video game systems have always been a luxury item.
The first generation of home video games that used interchangeable game cartridges as opposed to being devoted to a single game began in 1976 when the Fairchild VES, known as the Channel F, was introduced. However, the first commercially successful home video game unit of the cartridge generation was the Atari Video Computer System, later dubbed the 2600. Atari, having tasted success with its home Pong unit, introduced the VCS to combat the Channel F, and other companies like Magnavox and Bally followed suit, causing the first video game market crash in 1977. Only the VCS survived.
Sales of the Atari VCS became truly astronomical with the release of its version of the popular arcade game Space Invaders in 1980. Space Invaders, the first hit video game cartridge, was so popular that families would shell out for a VCS just so they could simulate the challenge of picking off alien spaceships one at a time. A VCS system sold for $200 upon its release in 1976, the equivalent of over $760 now, and Atari had not lowered the price when sales took off a few years later. Individual games cost $21, or about $80 in today’s dollars.
Mattel, inspired by the success of the Atari, launched a relatively successful system with better graphics and sound, the Intellivision, in 1979.. Its superior technology came with a heftier $300 price tag, which works out to nearly $800 today. The Intellivision had a four-year run before the great video game crash of 1983, releasing 125 games for the system.
Not to be outdone, Atari fought back with its own $300 game console in 1982 when it launched the technically superior 5200, which would set back a family $600 if it came out today. (Goes to show you how bad inflation was in those days.)
Mattel wasn’t the only toy company to try to capture video game market share. Milton Bradley took a break from board games to develop and release its Vectrex system in 1982. Offering graphics based on vector-shapes rather than pixels, its $200 price tag works out to about $450 now. Coleco jumped into the water in 1983 with the ColecoVision, with graphics that rivaled arcade machines and a $175 price point that would cost under $400 now.
The games that people enjoyed on those consoles are quite simple compared to the games you’d play on a console that sold for $400 today. Many of them have been duplicated as free online games for kids and adults. The fun is still the same as it was, but now the console you buy to play them also allows you to read articles like this one, among other things.
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