Is it normal to have "microtransactions" in $60 AAA games?

[mine]

Tachikoma said:

Because no matter how much you fiddle with inflation, the development of the original GTA cost DMA design 380,000 usd, the development of GTAV cost over 180 million.
Budgets are on average, 40-50x higher than they were in 1997, because the production of assets costs more for higher resolution, more varies assets, music licensing and larger teams to handle the greater level of detail needed to fill the worlds.

I suggest, if you are going to try and argue your point any further from here on out, you do a little research on the subject, or at the very least, consider that you are discussing it with someone who has been an active games developer since the 8bit era for major studios.

Oh yeah. Those budgets. Well - nobody forces them to increase their budgets that big - other than being able to attract more gamers with some "expensive tricks". 

Some as hollywood blockbuster movies. Most of them are action titles and those need to "add more and more" to satisfy.

Developers who bet on gameplay first hand are free to suit the graphical representation within budget. 

Of course you'll still need more people compared to the 8- or 16-bit era. But it's something like 10 times. 

Those AAA need 40-100 times more people and its short of a miracle they can handle them and still get something playable out of it. What a luck god gave us patches...