My thoughts about that idiot..

funny seeing some people call him an idiot, while the salivate over toys and figurines from games.

Same shit, both sides being milked.

lol judgmental fucks.

I don't get it. What are these packs for?

You have to buy packs of cards to get players on your team?

Microtransactions suck.

Well, I don't think this is that weird.
Seriously, in the past (and even today) a lot of people spent more money on stamps, cards and other collectibles. We just became more demanding with today's range of media. Now we buy games for 20€ on consoles (and 2€ on smartphones) which required thousands or millions to develop and which give us many hours of entertainment.
I personally would not buy these. I'm actually quite moderate as a consumer (I only buy one console per generation, I wait 2 years for the games to drop their price, etc.). Still, I don't think this is that absurd.

Those stamps, card, and other collectables increase in value over time though.

In 1 years time all the money you spent on Madden this year will be completely worthless.  Not only to everyone else in the world, but to the person who bought it as well.  He isn't going to pop in his Madden 10 years from now and look at his awesome roster and be all happy.

Also, I can see these microtransactions growing in the near future. It's how companies will do price discrimination, which is key in industries like games, movies, music, etc., since there is an initial high investment with marginal costs of reproduction.

You make a good point there. That's true only because there'll be new Madden games that'll make it obsolete. Still, in my perspective stamps and cards are also obsolete when compared to videogames. But that's just my opinion.

$95 seems like an awfully small amount of on the grand scheme of things. A brand new game already costs 60 dollars. That's over 80% of the money that he'll never recover (if he bought digitally).

Does the wife even know how much money they're spending on XBL over the years? Unless I'm missing something 95 really is nothing.

This is such BS. I'd say only 5% of all gaming things  collected increased value over time. Especially those marked exclusively as collectibles. The overwhelming majority decreases its value over time to the point of being a complete waste for anything other than sentimental value.

Usually the things that do increase value are rare items that were hardly ever sold.