system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why does the price of name brand foods vary at different stores but the price of electronics such as video game consoles are the same at every store?
gpt
Food is fairly cheap to produce and the markup is pretty huge depending on the food. A bag of chips that costs 50 cents to make will sell for 2 bucks. That's a sweet margin. And it gives room for discount stores to cut prices and have sales, etc. 

Additionally the price of food often fluctuates. The 2 dollar price is a good average that covers increases and decreases in potato costs if there's a bumper crop or famine. There is a theory for example that McDonald's times the return of the McRib with the ebb and flow of pork futures on the commodities market.

Video game consoles have much thinner margins. And the margins are consistent. Aluminum, plastic, and Lithium don't have bumper crops. Microsoft actually sold the first XBox at a loss because they had a longer term strategy of getting into the console market and putting an XBox in your living room as a sort of entertainment hub. Sony is the same way. Their goal isn't for you to buy their console, their goal is to get you to buy into their system. Sony has a stake in BluRay licensing which is why the PS3 was so gung ho on introducing BR discs.

Because these consoles use cutting edge tech, the process required to make them is slow and laborious and specialized. Over time it gets easier and faster and more automated which is why price drops occur later on.

Nintendo is not in the same game, they want their consoles to make profit. So that's why their consoles are cheaper and that's why their tech is a generation behind, because it's easier to make older tech.

In any case, the costs of making a PS4 don't fluctuate the way that potato chips do, and even then, there's not much room for sales.