You basically just equated the game industry to a bunch of talentless hacks who peddle graphics as a differeciator due to having no vision to expand in other ways.......which is an entire nother problem within itself.

That basically calls it the movie industry. And if it is the movie industry we know that movie theatre costs have been the same for decades now even though the movies they show budgets have skyrocketed.....yet they are making record profits constantly and movies are the same length and or longer. Why? because they are on the same premise that smartphone apps are. 

If you sweeten the package instead of increasing price adjacent to what you are offering you encourage more and more sales. Price is always barrier to entry so even if you are only making a penny off of each thing sold but you only charge 2 cents, you are much more likely to get 10million sold, as opposed to charging 5 bucks where you only sell about 10,000. I am not saying game prices should drop but if they were packing these games with more content(and entertainment) you would have less trade ins and encourage more people to buy it simply because it is a better deal overall.

I don't know where you live, but 20 years ago a movie ticket cost me 6 bucks.  Today it costs me 16.50.  Matinees cost me 11.  The prices have gone up just like movie budgets have.  May not be on the same scale, but they have increased.  Games on the other hand have seen increased budgets and steady base costs.

OMG This^

They are still $6 at most theatres here in VA. Regardless,the price hike of movie tickets in no way is in perportion to how high movie production costs have become. We are talking costing 10x as much now and that is low balling. The price hike of tickets is more in line with regular dollar inflation.

Game prices went $50-$60 during NES and SNES era, $40-$50 in PS1 ($50-$60 on N64), $50 on PS2/XBX/GCN era, and $60 in PS3/360 era.

Yet, what was the cheapest console library I have ever owned? PS3 easily. The number of sub $20 or even sub $10 games I own for that system is staggering. My average price of entry even buying several $60 games last generation was roughly ~$25. Now, outside of sports games in 8 and 16 bit era most tiles held at $50 for years and why I owned so many fewer titles and sharing games was a big deal with friends (you get Earthbound, you get Chrono Trigger, I'll get Super Metroid).

Also, game length is nothing new, many old games could be beaten in a sitting if the player was good enough. Issue was back then games were hard to often artificially inflate length (one hit kills, limited lives, brutal check points, or insane amount of grinding, etc.)

Wow and you notice that now?

This.

We talk basically about quality here. Back then and today we shouldn't fund bad games by buying them, especially not at full price. Back then people didn't buy that much first day. we should get back to it. No longer day 1 purchases, we should wait until we know if a game is worth it.

So... you basically say I should fund mismanagement then?

I used to buy Mega Drive games for over 100 dollareedoos, so i'll never understand modern pricing complaints.