I for one believes that the gaming industry needs to adapt.  Right now we are seeing the industry being dominated by two categories.  AAA and Indie/Arcade. Even then we also see plenty of failures.  B rated games on the other hand does not do so well and this is partly because the pricing sucks.  I believe every game should have a different price based off of their budgets and stop putting a set price for every game.   Why in the world would a B rated game need to be $60 anyways to turn a profit?  That would be like charging $40 for Limbo.  Just not worth it.

Example below.

AAA Games - $60

B Rated Games $25-$40

Arcade/Indie - 0.99c - $20

And while we are at it, please do something about DLC.  DLC has been a great introduction to added content to the market but as they stand they are also too expensive for the amount of content we are recieiving at this given moment.

Map Packs for example at most should b $10 although they should probably be around $5.  Anyways you know where I'm getting at.

So any thoughts?

I would like to add that digital should be cheaper/or retail more expensive with 10 to 15 bucks with AAA games and 5 to 10 with B games

It's surprising how few companies are willing to deviate from the 60 dollar norm. NISA does it pretty regularly, but I was kind of happy to see some of Sony's games being released for 40 lately. I believe both Sly 4 and Puppeteer will be/was 40 dollars at launch. I agree that in general it's a great idea, companies just need to get past the idea that it's insulting to their development effort. Of course, if they just budget for less sales at the 60 dollar price that's fine as well, but I think games without that pedigree of being amazing could benefit overall with a 40 dollar price over 60.

Agreed.  All digital needs to go the Steam route to be honest.  Even Nintendo.  I was looking through the Eshop last night and it annoyed me that they were selling games that are a decade old for $7.  

Who gets to decide the ratings? Who will regulate them? Will the cost of setting up and maintaining these extra layers of bureaucracy be passed onto us in the form of even higher prices? Will we get situations where the prices of "lower rated" games increase to subsidise an industry with ideas above its station?

Then we have to worry about all the awful discussion we'd get here if this officially sanctioned Metacritic bullshit ever happened.

Budgets decide the ratings.  AAA doesnt mean a game is a good game.  It just means it had a high budget is all.  And reviews also considers the price of the game so if a game is $40 rather than $60 it will likely also get a little bit better (even if not much) of a metacritic score helping them in that aspect as well.

I do like the idea of tier pricing. As for dlc, especially map packs for cod are way to high. You get a couple maps and some aren't even new. What are your thoughts on season passes?

These ideas, the way you describe them works exactly in that manner on Android, iOS, Windows 8.

These platforms are only called mobile platforms as they are mostly consumed on mobile devices. Now that iOS has a controller SDK, Google is delivering a console along with other like Nvidia Shield, Ouya, and Windows 8 app store is getting more traction...these platforms will become gaming platforms. Developers are making mobile games only because that's where these devices have most traction.

But things are changing my friend.

People need to listen to non gaming podcasts from the Verge, Engadget, Tekzilla...etc. Gaming stuff they talk about is quite interesting.

Nope, prices are dictated by supply and demand....aka whatever the average gamer is willing to pay.

There's only one company i've ever seen do DLC properly, and that's FROM SOFTWARE. Artorias of the abyss provided me with over 20 extra hours of content for $15. That's almost double some retail titles.

Then shit like Dead Space 2 you get a 37 minute DLC for $15.