Welcome to the Stupid-Crazy Amount of Money Series! As the name sorta kinda hints at, this series focuses on having a stupid-crazy amount of money and what could possibly be done with it. For those who don’t possess the vernacular of a mid-20’s geek, stupid-crazy is actually in fact a scientific term, a hyphenated adjective, if you will, that describes “amount of money” in this case. Put another way, a stupid-crazy amount of money means having a rather large amount of cash at your disposal that is ridiculous, almost impossible, and utterly nonsensical… all at the same time. Okay, so while not exactly a scientific term, I’ve just made it an official Go Be Rich term, so just go with it.
Anyway, this is simply a fun, creative series that explores what could be done with unlimited cash. Ever wanted to buy Russia? How about the moon? Maybe you just want to buy every single dog in the world a pink stuffed chew-toy? Whatever you want to do, you can do it in the Stupid-Crazy Amount of Money series. Below is the second entry.
The SCAM Series: Total Cost of the Best Videogames
E3 happened this month. Don't know what E3 is? It's about 3 full days of absolute amazingness, that's what it is.
To be more specific, E3 stands for the yearly Electronic Entertainment Expo. Yes, this is going to be a videogame post. But even if you don't like videogames, my awesome writing style will keep you entertained, I promise.
Every year, the big names in the videogame industry get together for a huge expo, showcasing their newest games and hardware, as well as teasing fans with info on upcoming games that may not be released for 2 or 3 years to come.
E3 (and Christmas) gets me back in the videogame mood every year, which is probably what triggered a memory about something that I used to dream about as a kid with limited financial means: owning every single video game ever made.
Today I'm going to calculate the stupid-crazy cost of doing just that.
Note: when I started this, I had no idea that there were about 3 billion actual videogame systems, each with their own set of games, so we're instead going to stick with a good amount of the most popular video game systems and their games.
Let's start with the hardware. After all, I would've had to buy the hardware to play the games on. I think we'll go back as far as the Magnavox Odyssey, which was about 15 years before I was a screaming, crying, pooping baby, so this is for all you "wiser" folks out there. Plus, this is where many people consider the beginning of the home video game console era to have begun.
The Hardware
Below is a list of the top 25 consoles as complied by video game website IGN back in 2009, including original release date, the price when they were released, and the inflation-adjusted cost of buying a brand-new console today (not that all but a handful of these consoles are still produced today). IGN however didn't deem handhelds good enough for this list, and I can't possibly write an article on videogames while consciously leaving out the Gameboy line, so I've thrown them in as well.
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Total Cost of owning every one of these systems, brand-new, in the year 2011: between $12,116.38 and $12, 336.38.
You could buy 30 video game consoles, or a new Herbeau Dagobert Wooden Throne Toilet (personally, I would be afraid of the whole splinter possibility).
The Games
At first I thought surely I would be able to find a list of every single game that was released for every single console on our list along with the price they were released at. I quickly discovered this to be absolutely impossible. So, change of plans. To continue this post I've utilized a site called Videogames.Pricecharting.com, which takes a look at the what each game on each console is selling for on EBay, Amazon, HalfPrice.com, and a few other sources, and arrives at an average price point.
One thing to keep in mind: several games have, over time, become ridiculous collector's items, such as one original Nintendo game selling for $20,100.00 (Nintendo Campus Challenge 1991). That's right, you could either go buy this crappy game, or put a down payment on a house.
So while in one sense this will severely skew the final number from what you originally could have bought all of these games for brand-new on the store shelves back in the day, in another sense this will be a completely accurate price for what is available today.
Total Cost of purchasing every single game for every one of these consoles: $265,029.99. Forget the down payment on a house… you could either buy a total of 16,341 games for a total of 30 different consoles, or you could simply buy that house outright. Of course, then you wouldn't have any money for video games.
