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There's certainly something to be said about games that come out unfinished and then proceed to and nickle and dime the consumer. I'm totally not a fan of that. MVC3 should have never launched the way it did and their DLC model is disgusting.
I'm on the bandwagon that you should pay for the the product is worth. If you think Dead Island is worth 20 bucks or only worth a rental I'm totally in agreement with you. At least part of the 20 bucks you're paying once the price drops hits goes back to the developer.
The issue that I have is with the middle man like Gamestop getting rich screwing both me the developer over and you the consumer over. You get screwed by getting jack for your trade in and "screwed" by having to pay an activation fee for online. I get screwed because I don't see any of that money back in my pocket that affects everything from future development endeavors to my healthcare plan. If my studio makes a total piece of crap game I don't expect to be well compensated for it. I'm not mad at the consumer because I, myself am going to find the best and cheapest deal possible. I'm mad at the resellers who are taking a product I worked on and making money off of it without me seeing a dime while they get rich.
The jump in price from 49.99 to 59.99 is completely justified considering that any A-AAA title being produced is costing anywhere from 2-5 times more than it did in the PS2 era. People were shelling out 50-60 bucks for NES games for Christ sake. If prices are lowered then the product is going to suffer because of the current state of development costs. The average PS2 game cost around 15-20 million to produce, today 360 titles cost an average of 40 million. Losing 100 million in sales isn't chump change.
The only way to combat the whoring out that gamestop perpetuates is to create online authentication systems. Everyone hates it but once a standardized system is set in place it's just going to become in the norm in the future.
