I disagree.  I've been saying for absolutely ages that games need tiered pricing systems.

Like the example I raised, Ridge Racer is not a £40 game.  Not even close to it.  If I'd paid that amount of money at launch, I'd feel royally pissed off.

When I picked it up for £10 with a gold pass + paid £3 to download the silver pass, I felt like I was getting a good deal.  There was a decent amount of content; a decent amount of cars & some good music.  That was a price point I was happy picking up the game for.  Reviews reflected this.  They slated the game for being a full price release with 3 tracks but noted that a cheaper price point + the promised DLC tracks would make it a better game.

Had Namco released it as a £10 title with 2 DLC tracks to come then I'd imagine it would've reviewed a whole lot better.

So at the core of it, it's not a very good game so you wouldn't spend a lot of money on it. That makes sense and I agree with it. The core of the problem is the quality of the game/content, rather than the cost of the item.