Taking a moment to ignore the majority of people's commments (though I did read most of them)...
I still, to this day, personally see the increased cost of making games (ie: development process) as something of a joke. Think about it, it's apparently costing more and more to make games, but the quality of the games isn't exactly going up. To me, that says people aren't using the tools they already have to the best of their ability and are instead wasting more money on fancier graphics, flashier character models, and bigger explosions/more gore.
Compound that with the feeling I've had for some time that developers just didn't push the previous consoles to their full potential the way that developers did with the NES and SNES (which had easilly doubled or tripled in quality by the end of their reign, and for either the same or aruably less cost to produce). In previous generations, we'd have seen games on consoles that were on their way out rivaling the quality of games on consoles that just came out. A good example is Final Fantasy 7 being on 3 discs when it was released, but would have easilly been on 1 disc in a few years time. Where-as today, we're seeing games on NEW generation consoles looking much like games on the previous generation but with "more realistic graphics" during the cinematics.
It sometimes feels to me that the developers are putting too much effort in the wrong places. Instead of spending millions of dollars making a woman's breasts look as believeable as possible, or trying to get just that perfect brain splatter effect, or looking to pass the uncanny valley mark... they should be putting more thought into making the game itself look/present better. There's no point in spending tons on making the graphics awesome if the game itself is short, lacking in content, and with little replay value. Of course, one reasons today the reason being is that they can charge you for a normally full game made just like that, and then tack on DLC for even more money to give you the content they didn't have time to finish or couldn't be assed to include originally.
I do, however, agree that the prices are not going to go down. It's not any better in stores, either. GameStop MAY let you trade in 5-6 games to get a 50-60 dollar game, but then they're going to go and force us consumers to pay 30-40 dollars for that used game you just traded in for like 5-10 dollars. I understand a need to earn something outta that, but it really hits people like me (who have little money these days due to the economy) hard that New and Used games in stores like GameStop are almost the same price regardless of how poor quality the used copy is in. I once saw them charging 40 bucks for a used/no manual copy of Disgaea, and considering how insane that game is without the manual, it was a rip-off.
I do not like digital distribution. I like having the solid artifact in my hands. The smell of a new game, a clean manual... on the other hand, I don't like how easy it is to accidentally damage discs (one of the reasons I loved cartridges, albeit they had less room). But the problem is, I don't like the pricing. I can hardly buy new games (or any games) anymore because the prices are outlandish and the quality of the game itself is rarely worth the 40-50 dollars I spent on it. A good example of that was Metroid Prime 2. I was so excited to get the game brand new the day it came out for like 50 bucks, and by the time I'd finished it, I couldn't believe I paid so much for a game just didn't deliver near what I'd expected after previous installments had been so much more worth the money I paid for them.
..and don't even get me started on the whole "3 versions of the same game with slightly different content" bullshit. I've never agreed with it being applied to anything but Pokemon, and even that has gotten ridiculous.