Well, again I'm going to address you directly Jim.
I think your criticisms overlook the truth of the matter, which is simply that gaming has become a cartel. Basically the game industry coordinates prices, and sets the $60 price range regardless of the cost to make a game in order to kill competition. That way everyone gets to make huge amounts of money, and the whole principle of American business.. competition forcing companies to release the best possible product at the lowest possible price, is undermined. This price setting, combined with market coordination (changing release dates so big titles tend to not go head to head.. the release of a Modern Warfare for example will see other games be pushed forward or back), as well as contributing to the industry being able to release buggy messes and fix them later, since coordination means everyone is doing the same basic thing so you can't really say "this guy charges less money, and produces a better product".
Price fixing is price fixing, the whole idea is to prevent anyone from undercutting anyone else, which is why the $60 price tag remains on digital games. The industry as a whole basically figures that if they stick with the $60 price tag, they can pocket all the money they save on packaging and distribution as pure profit. They figure retail is doomed all on it's own due to their other schemes (retail copies actually being digital copies that install through steam, DLC, etc..) and all they have to do is stick to their guns on the price and they can keep the same model in force.
The promise of lowering prices through digital distribution is simply BS to us rubes to sell the new system.
The reason why those who want to break this system, or claim to, typically do not do so, is because they have to worry about the pressure from the rest of the industry, which is what makes it a cartel.
On a lot of levels it's the same exact thing that oil companies and other big businesses do, even if they aren't supposed to, it's just that the games industry has yet to get govermental attention.
Now, you and others are probably sitting there going "Wow Theru, that is a borked conspiricy theory" but understand that when it comes to pricing we've seen many cases where people have spoken for what the entire industry is thinking. We also saw annoucements of the price of games raising $10, which happened universally (as opposed to with a few companies) which itself shows coordination. In addition things like the GDC (Game Developer's Conferance) and other meetings also seem to be where publishers and executives get together to discuss and set industry wide policy that is going to benefit everyone in the business. It seems to be after meetings like that, that we see annoucements like "games are going to be hiked another $10".
I've been of the opinion for a while that we won't see anything close to industry reform as far as prices go, unless some major goverments with anti-cartel policies drop the punk hammer on these guys. In the case of the game's industry they aren't even subtle, they wouldn't even need to do the kinds of investigations you see being made on oil companies. Some of the annoucements about 'what the industry is discussing' is pretty much the wet dream of what some investigators wish Oil or Drug companies would do.
A Cartel is more or less the same thing as a Monopoly in the final equasion, the differance being that in a Monopoly one person totally controls something, with a Cartel all the people in a given business coordinate to achieve the same kinds of results. In the games industry you even see the behavior of the big companies snapping up all the independants who could compete with the Cartel. While unrelated to cartel behavior directly, we even have violence and strong arm tactics being employed, looking at what happened when Activision closed Infinity Ward for it's own purposes (ie a security raid).
Agree or disagree on the specifics, the bottom line is that unless the industry starts competing and we start seeing big titles going head to head more often instead of release dates being adjusted, and publishers trying to release better products for less money, nothing is going to change, and really the industry has no interest in doing this on it's
own since people will pay those prices when given no choice. It's not like the heavy hitters like EA and Activision actually have any motivation to change the system, after all they both make millions and billions of dollars each year with the prices set the way they are, their rivalry being mostly words, they don't do much against each other as far as prices or anything, they just shuffle release dates around, and make enough money where guys like Bobby Kotick can have a private jet, and could probably roll cigarettes in $100 bills if he wanted to.
