Considering inflation, games should be a lot more expensive!
...and, considering the economics of scale, they should be a lot less expensive.
It's not like inflation is the only driver behind prices.
A gaming sub free from the hype and oversaturation of current releases, catering to gamers who wait at least 12 months after release to play a game. Whether it's price, waiting for bugs/issues to be patched, DLC to be released, don't meet the system requirements, or just haven't had the time to keep up with the latest releases.
Considering inflation, games should be a lot more expensive!
...and, considering the economics of scale, they should be a lot less expensive.
It's not like inflation is the only driver behind prices.
the problem is CEO after you bought your $100 game for your $700 console. "We could boost profits so I can get my bonus this quarter by enabling microtransactions anyway and shut down the severs on the game you bought after a year. Because not enough people are buying the game anymore and we don't offer dedicated servers like we did for 20 years with no issues but now it's too hard. We will keep the severs going but you need to buy a subscription."
If you feed the beast more it just craves more to be full. I would have no problem paying the same prices for games in the 90s adjusted inflation. If wages had kept up with productively. Hell they can even keep the cost reduction going from carts to CDs or downloads.
Also the Steam Deck is $349 right now.
Sorry, but inflation is a not great reasoning.
Wages in a lot of the world (especially the US) have been completely left behind by inflation, so many people are paid very similarly to how they were paid in the 2000s. That is the entire driver behind the insane wealth inequality gap.
Video games are a luxury good, so if you up the price (especially for shitty cranked out AAA games with little replay value and dubious quality) then they will see profits actually fall because so many people will see those games as not worth it. Not to mention that orders of magnitude more people are just struggling to pay rent now with skyrocketing housing prices (corporations switching to housing for investments and buying up all property) and worsening working conditions.
The reason companies are switching to subscriptions and micro transactions en masse is because they just work, take minimal effort, and make massive profits. They are literally exploiting flaws in the human psyche.
According to blizzard, 1 single horse skin microtransaction in world of warcraft made more money than all of the sales from the entire game of StarCraft 2: wings of liberty.
Plus, let's say all of this was successful in switching the content of games to less exploitative means of earning profits. Do you think developers will be treated better? Do you think shareholders will forgo their worship of yearly increasing profits and treat employers fairly? More likely they would just increase the price and double dip by micro transactions, loot boxes, and battle passes for those precious profits.
I would love to go back to the better times of games also, but corporate greed prevents it at every turn.