I may not be a pundit of how games are made, but I know the basics. A game like Uncharted or LA Noire spends much due to its story, animation and voice over. I don't know how you say Mario or LBP games should be in the Uncharted or LA Noire level cause they did not spend that much money making it. 

What ever happened to the $50 standard? Remember last gen when all 3 systems had new games for $49.99... why couldn't that have transfered over to this gen? I understand HD projects cost more money and have larger budgets but publishers could potientally sell more copies if they reduced the price or could sustain that price point longer.

mhmm. yes just be thankful the devs aren't charging each person the actual cost it takes to make the game (not practical but be thankful).

People have a very short memory. Many first and second-party N64 games were $59.99 back in the day. Sold like hotcakes.

In the end...all of this whining is completely meaningless. If the game is worth $60, and people can see it's worth the full price, it will sell, and the console industry will carry on as it always has.

With the exception of Galaxy 2, your comment about Mario games is quite inaccurate.  The leap and jump in hardware and graphics between Mario 64, Sunshine, and Galaxy is quite large.  They all use completely different engines and required a large team of people over 2 1/2 years to make.  Same as most games.  Also, it isn't fair to say a game lacks 'quality' merely because it is re-using assets or engine specs.  Galaxy 2 re-used the engine from the first game, but it was an entirely new game... with a 2 1/2 year development cycle.  Most highly-rated Wii game ever.

I am not talking about re-using the same engine or assets, I am talking about not using any new things in the series. No storyline, no hiring for voice-over and motion capture etc.

May be you think it is justified that Mario and GTA games to be priced similar at $60 although GTA cost way more to develop.

It's apples and oranges.  If Nintendo had decided to make an HD Mario sandbox box game with 100 hours worth of gameplay, the budgets would most likely have been very similiar.

As a rough estimate, about 60% of the budget of most videogames today is the creation of graphical assets (models, textures, animations, and level design), about 20% is scripting and programming, 10% is administration, and the remaining 10% is things like story line, music and voice acting. Obviously these values would jump around from game to game but I think my numbers are in the ballpark for a typical game.

Now, I think there is an argument that Nintendo should (possibly) release games like New Super Mario U at a lower price due to the (probably) lower development costs; but the lack of the features you list are fairly meaningless to the cost of a game like Mario Galaxy or Zelda.

I am not sure where you want to drag the argument. Let's say Mario game's budget is $30 million and GTA's budget is $100 million. You want to say both should cost $60? Why?

Well first to address your point about how expensive some games were back in the SNES/N64 days, back then they used expensive carts with large (at the time) ROM chips instead of dirt cheap discs, which Nintendo charged a pretty hefty licensing fee for.  And even some early PS1/Saturn games were $60 at launch or shortly after.  Once CDs/DVDs became standard that's when prices started dropping to $50 and below until we hit the HD era and development costs started skyrocketing.

Anyway back on topic... I don't have a problem with it in general since the MSRP for most HD games is $59.99 anyway, though I'm hoping that with development tools getting better and all three next gen systems being similar to one another rather than having radically different architecture and abilities, the standard MSRP will eventually go down to $50 again, but I'm not holding my breath.

What I do have an issue with however is the fact that this is Nintendo we're talking about.  While most PS360 games initially sell for $60, you can usually get them much cheaper within a few months after launch (unless it's a huge seller like a Halo or COD).  Nintendo on the other hand likes to charge full price for their 1st party titles for YEARS.  It took nearly 5 years into the Wii's lifecycle before Nintendo finally dropped the price of LAUNCH titles like Twilight Princess down to $20, a price that most PS360 games usually hit or come close to within a year or so after release.

Another thing is that there's no way games like Nintendo Land and NSMBU should be $60.  You saw what happened last year with Rayman Origins being released at $60... despite rave reviews it sold terribly because most people didn't want to spend that much money on a 2D platformer, and it received a huge price cut within a month or so.  Now obviously Nintendo Land and Mario will sell regardless of price, but it still feels like Nintendo is gouging consumers a bit... especially since Nintendo Land is a pack in with the premium Wii U bundle for just $50 more than the base model.