[janh]

To be honest, for a good titles with high development cost but small audience the price ought be higher. See WITP-AE. It seems to work for Matrix there.

It is all about what you offer. I played SHIII for how many years now? Or Operation Flashpoint for almost 8 years before I switched to Arma2. Especially due to modding capabilities good titles "Live" much longer, and modding has decreased my "need" for new games substantially. I buy much less then before, for sure.

I would think rather than the new Ubisoft strategy of less changes to game engines, reuse of engines for other titles and faster output of franchises with less development time in between (outlined in their 2010 strategy paper), they should start thinking longer term. Sell an expensive game engine that only gets reworked and releases every >5 years, but sell 1-2 small $20 addons every year in the meantime for one engine. Each addon could maybe include some small, customer driven changes to the engine, so that it adds something modders can't provide. That way the original game release could remain below $50 despite large development costs, and companies bind customers by quality and service. And they add to their revenue by the addons.