The "whales and long tails" theory of mobile game monetization predicts that 20% of a free-to-play game's revenue comes from people who spend money like it's water (the "whales,") while the majority of your revenue comes from ordinary users who buy a few things things multiple times over the entire lifetime of the product. (This forms a "long tail" on the graph showing money-per-user spent over time.)
So what happens when the economy takes a nose-dive like the one we're in right now? The middle class spend less. Whales become a bigger percentage of the overall market share because they're the only ones with any money for discretionary spending, and they have no concept of how much they spend or what real-world prices are like, so they're perfectly willing to drop 200 bucks or more on something like Angry Birds.
(Hell, spending a lot is a status symbol for these people. You could probably make a mobile game that just puts a sign above your avatar's head saying how much you spent on the game, and watch those numbers go up and up and up as the Whales try to outspend each other for bragging rights!)
I don't have access to any sales figures, so I can't prove this theory. I could be totally wrong. But if the rich people who can readily afford these bullshit prices ever become more than 50% of the total market, well... EA's bullshit starts to make economic sense at that point.
What else are they gonna do? Make it up in volume? In THIS economy?
The Whales are the only people who can afford to buy several titles at $60 each and then spend an arbitrary amount more on top of it for in-game purchases. So if EA is making that their de-facto business model, they must expect everyone else to just stop buying their games altogether.
Fortunately, as this video points out, there are signs that it's NOT profitable when that happens, no matter how much you gouge.
So, bye bye, Old Guard! Have fun creating the most expensive games on the planet on 20% of the market share!