http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation
Cory,
yes, but I think that was a decision by the company to keep the price fixed. Perhaps they did that to have a competitive advantage over the other consoles, so that in the long term they would have more sales. The price of the playstation 3 is also more because it has a built in blu-ray player, and the Xbox360 has a lot of processing power, its as powerful as most PCS, although poorly engineered I hear. I heard it keeps burning out due to the improper cooling.So there's that issue, but I'm also not convinced that prices would be marked up very quickly. I remember not too long ago when the Nintendo Wii was selling so much that it was often out of stock, but it's price remained fixed, even when they had their competition Playstation 3 priced at double the amount. Nintendo couldn't keep enough units on the shelves, but the price of the unit never went up.
Businesses have the choice not to inflate their prices to meet the demand. However, many times, companies will charge the most for their product when it first comes out because they know the hype will be high, demand will be high, and many times, these companies want to quickly recoup any R&D investments they have in the product for years of development.
But overall, companies are greedy, if their product and service is in higher demand than what they can produce, that is a sign that they can make much more from it so they will inflate to increase profits. Or if there is a universal consenus, that the value of the money is dropping for whatever reason, they will inflate to try to prevent loss.