Dear Future Gamer,

Why does anybody care about the launch price of the new consoles? Whenever a new machine is released in Japan or wherever, it's imported to Britain at a ludicrously inflated price. (Remember the N64 on sale for £800 to £1,500 in the first few days? Without any games? I laughed.) The official price is halved or more within a couple of months. Why don't you just be patient?

"Anon"

FG: Everything is more expensive when it first comes out, even discounting the lucrative "immediate import" market, where people will pay, as you say, ludicrous prices just to be the first to have something new. The manufacturer wants to recoup their costs as quickly as possible, and the price will usually drop as the console picks up in popularity. It's an economy of scale: if you're making five million consoles, each unit is vastly cheaper to put together than if you were making only a few thousand.

Stinging the "early adopters" - essentially, this technique penalises a company's biggest fans - is almost a tradition in console land, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Sony deliberately broke the mould and released the PS2 at a low, low price from day one.