interesting variability

Now even $300 for a console seems expensive when I can buy an iPad or a PC for just a little more.

What this tells me is that consoles are dying.

Once again Microsoft has dominated a dying market.

I like your comment, but I disagree.

This graph simply shows one should price their consoles between $250 and $375 -- the market won't bear much more than that.

The kindle fire is $199, the nexus 7 is $199, and there are a score of Android 10" tablets for $399 -- however, folks are purchasing apple iPads. Eric Schmidt recently said that Tablets make .5 % of all android activations or roughly 2.5m devices.

This current generation of consoles are at the end of the life cycle; competitive pricing, compelling games, and innovative features and content will ensure that the console business continues to grow.

The iPad and iPhone/Android Phone will eventually effectively kill the Nintendo Gameboy, but I don't believe they'll kill consoles.

To add to my comment; here are some reasons why:

i) middle class around the world is larger than ever, and will continue to grow for the continual future.

ii) Outside of Silicon Valley, the great majority of Americans still build their entertainment experiences centered around the living room -- the iPad is seen as more of an additive device, not a replacement.

iii) The analogy of iPads to consoles is like YouTube to TV. Would you cut all access to television in home, bars and outside to replace them with YouTube videos and programming? The content on YouTube is varied and has a great deal of specificity (walk-through of level 17 of portal) but the entertainment value is much, much lower than television. It's the difference between professional (insert_activity, athletes, musicians, comedians, entertainment) and amateur.

Increasingly there is more good content on the internets, but Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube are good examples as to why consoles won't die anytime soon. The retail gaming environment is just so much better than the $.99 games released on mobile.