Because the current climate of the industry is either F2P for smaller scale games or big scale console games. There will always be a small market for good mid-tier work, but the games that drive the industry's sales are games with huge budgets (that's development and advertising budgets). We've seen so many excellent developers dissapear completely because the industry couldn't sustain it. Due to the new nature of devaluation of games (as in, people don't see a game as worth "X" price based on whatever reasons) and the lack of price increases with inflation, the industry has been forced to adopt new ways to not collapse.

And honestly, the industry isn't filled with examples of hugely successful inexpensive games. There are very, very few (Rocket League and Minecraft jump immediately to mind) that actually fit the bill.

Nope, $80 is too expensive. $60 should be the maximum imo.

I don't even want to buy a $60 game, how would I buy an $80 one? I don't care about DLC, I'm ok with the original content. That's why I only buy PC games nowadays (or play free games on Android). I can limit myself to $20 games and still have tons of fun.

Not always if it's a Multi-player game as game populations can implode.

I got Star wars Battlefront 2 months after release on XBox One for 35 Euro ;) And many other multiplayer games like Battleborn are also very cheap 1 month after release! I payed 80 Euro for Battleborn at launch and 1 month after that the costs 30 Euro, I will never buy a game again on launch besides games from Nintendo because they keep their prices!

Edit: I really feel like an idiot for buying games fullprice at launch nowadays!

I'm Australian, so sometimes servers can be barren. :P

But I agree. Buying games at full price is silly. I'm primarily a PC gamer so I have gotten used to paying a fraction of the price.

Ok :) This is also a good point and a good reason why consoles gamers should not buy games at launch for 60-70 Euros in my opinion. The same games costs at launch on PC always less than half the price from the console version. It's absolute unacceptable for my why publishers has such big differences in prices. It's like console players get punished because they like to play on consoles instead on PC! And that console gamers don't complain about that is getting out of my mind, they care more about fucking resolutions and fps than their own money!

More people marked "no" and I really have to wonder why.

Remember in the "good ol' days" when all the content was on the cartridge/disc, so you paid 1 price for the whole game? The proposition in the OP is, effectively, that. 

Are you guys who are marking "no" making that answer because of the price of $80 (I saw a couple responses that are, more or less, "gamers are being charged too much already)? Well, guess what? You're actually being spoiled right now. You're paying less for games! Development costs are going through the roof, yet you're paying less money for the content.

When games were "whole" and everything about the game was in one package, you were paying $40, $50, $60, sometimes $70 for a game!

Proof

The first set of ads looks to be 1996 ($200 PS1. "97" year for sports titles. $200 N64 [price was cut to $149 in early 1997]. Etc.). Well, $40, $50, $60, and $70 in 1996 = $61.45, $76.81, $92.18, and $107.54 in 2016, respectively.

So, technically, $80 is pretty reasonable for a game. And if that included all post-launch content as well? I'd be happy to pay that much, knowing the historical context of the cost of games and not just thinking games are "too expensive" now when they're the cheapest they've ever been.