It's also one of the most
expensive home game consoles ever made, matched in price in recent years by the original Xbox One, which came with an expensive Kinect peripheral, and the original PlayStation 3.
Not exact matches
That has led to a flourishing market for
games with quirkier sensibilities — not just the
expensive, gory and violent shooters that have become the bread and butter of
home consoles.
On the other side of the spectrum, the
home console, or AES, turned out to be too
expensive for the masses, despite the perfect arcade quality of the
games.
A quick note about the data above: it's based on sales by revenue (not units), so
home consoles have an advantage since they're not only more
expensive than handhelds, their
games also cost (sometimes a lot) more than their handheld counterparts.
This just hammers
home how much more
expensive console gaming is though, even when
games are on «sale».
It was the most
expensive home console ever at the time, and its
games were four or five times the price of its Sega / Nintendo counterparts.