Not the best example, FFIX loading times were horrible.

Its insane how prices in the US hasnt changed for games since then.. Every gen here in europe game prices goes up by about the equivilant of 10 dollars... If i were to go to a gamestop today and pick up a random day 1 release it would set me back nearly 110 dollars.

Yea, but that certainly wouldn't have to happen today. The reality is, even if every cartridge had 50gb of data to match what was on disks, I wouldn't see it having a production cost of more than $10-$15, which could be represented with a nominal price increase of $20 or less. Not that big of a deal, and something I would be more than willing to pay extra for.

Especially as somebody who plays sports games, the load times have always just been atrocious. I often play golf on my PS3, and my round times could be cut in half or better with significantly reduced loading times between frames.

SotN also had annoying loading times, but I was simply listing great PSX exclusives that could have came out for the N64 if it didn't use carts!

It's easy to talk about inflation without factoring in cost of living and how average salaries have not risen in line with increased cost of living. My dad supported a wife and four children on a single income while I was growing up. Today, my wife and a I combined have 2 full time jobs and 1 part-time job just to get by, and with no children. You might want to think about the average person's circumstances before declaring they have a "sense of entitlement" because they don't want to pay $80 each on a video game.

It's also one of the reason FFVXIII was supposed to be a ps3 exclusives, at some time they were even worried about hitting the bluray limits.

I'm pretty sure the end of this gen will be funny concerning bluray's limitations

Games are all installed now, or you can buy digital. Replacing the HDD with an SSD only slightly increases loading times. Why would that be different with a cartridge? It's not worth $20 extra per game to shave a few seconds of load times.

What is possible is have a cartridge and install parts to fast SSD memory inside the console, then have 2 fast places to load from while playing. However storage space and downloadable games parity is the priority nowadays. The blu-ray drive is ignored while it could be used alongside the HDD to speed up loading.

I would argue that only a second or two gained is somehow related to lack of optimization for SSD for consoles, because it is pretty significant on PC. Battlefield 4 online for instance will have maps load in 40 seconds instead of 65. That same ratio, if seen in a console (on my PS3 while playing golf for instance), could literally shave 5 seconds off in between every single shot. It seems like nothing, but in a single tournament, that means I will finish it 24 minutes faster if I golf par. That...is significant, and is most certainly worth the additional cost.

Hm, well in economics class when we calculate inflation it is for the same exact goods. I guess they "cheat" in the real world. Inflation should be a measurement of how the devaluation of money(caused by its arbritrary production) affects prices of products. 

Gamers today are completely spoiled in how much they have to pay for their hobby. People bitch that 10-15$ downloadable titles, which are basically AAA titles of yesteryear, are too expensive, and wait so they can get it in a 1$ humblebundle. I just shake my head.

They will skip a 1$ game for a crappy free-to-play and then spend a hundred bucks on microtransactions.