To be fair to Capcom, I think that an ideal world for them would be not having to compete against games whose expectations and ideations are out-of-wack with the price point and requires huge sales numbers to even be profitable.

For example, SF6 has a full single player mode that exceeds any of the output of previous games. While the quality of this single player mode is sub-par, it’s still very ambitious compared to their old method of releasing fighting games (Arcade mode and Versus mode, with some mini games – that’s all!) and it finds itself having to compete with other 60 dollar titles whose scope is often outlandish while knowing full well that a fighting game can never move FPS game figures, for example.

The 60 dollar game made a lot more sense in the era of the PS2 where games were often linear experiences, sometimes lightly to heavily cinematic. A game that was made like MGS2 could be sold today for 60 dollars and it would have a very hard time competing against huge blockbusters like Starfield, with some probably scoffing at the idea of paying 60 dollars for that experience. (See Armored Core 6 – a good example of this that actually happened.)

Unfortunately considering how many of these gamers are willing to pay extra $30€ just to get 1 week earlier access to a game, I’m afraid you are wrong in this regard and we’re going to see prices go up even more. Piracy is also dying, either because of groups disbanding or getting sued, or because of DRM getting better and more widespread, and once that is gone it’s going to let publishers jack the price even higher up.

I’m pretty much resigned to just play indie and AA games at this point, there’s no way I’m paying 60 or more for these broken, bloated and often overpriced products. There are few exceptions but even they will be driven to higher prices eventually.