Inflation: Don't look foolish

Never apply the general Consumer Price Index of inflation to a specific product. That isn't how the CPI works. That is like telling someone to set their Ark Server to "Easy".

This is how inflation is actually calculated. Economists take a basket of goods, then they adjust the impact a good has on a household budget, like a slider on an Ark server setting, adjust for possible substitutions, then finally adjust for any improvements in quality. 

Shelter, or housing, for example has a rather large impact on a household budget. It also doesn't have a lot of substitutions because physics and regulations. Lastly, housing quality has technically gone down as regulation and building practices have allowed for less and cheaper material. Shelter inflation, as seen in the graph for the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, outpaces base CPI quite a bit.

Computers, on the other hand, go in the opposite direction. GPUs aren't needed to live, substitutions are sometimes an option, and Moore's Law has led to quality growth outpacing inflation by quite a bit. That is why the price of new flagship phone is relatively stable. Nobody is building equity in their Iphone 6.

When people compare the price of the PS5 Pro to the price of a Neo Geo or a 3DO, they have an awful habit of using the general CPI inflation calculator. That is like using the average touchdowns scored of every player across the NFL instead of a player's individual stat, when talking about how effective a player is. Instead, these things need to be isolated to comparable products. As the graph shows, computer technology has deflated in price over the past 10 years, as it has done since the 1960s. 

When comparing to the 3DO or the Neo Geo, we have to adjust their prices down for deflation, not up for inflation. That $700 PS5 Pro would be adjusted up if we were going back in time. So yes, the PS5 Pro will be the most expensive console ever produced and sold to the general market.