As Replicant said, the additional costs associated with DLC and other post-launch content are purely optional. Online subscriptions are optional as well. You do not need Xbox Live Gold or PS+ to play single-player games.

Also, what would you prefer: New games costing $80 new, with any add-on content being free, or games remaining $60 with the option of buying DLC/expansions/MTX?

The declining price of software combined with the rising cost of game development (which is not offset by market growth) meant something had to give at some point. While I don't defend the increasingly aggressive and often predatory ways many publishers monetize their games post-launch, I do completely understand why these businesses might seek to monetize their games at all.

Are we really though? We have countless massive wide-open game worlds with 60 hours worth of gameplay. Fighting games still have rosters as large as the historical norm (and back in the 90s, when you had a roster expansion, it meant an entire new full-price re-release of the game, as we saw with Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat 3). Platformers still exist and are similar to or larger in scale than ones from several generations ago. Back in the 16-bit era, most games aside from JRPGs could be beaten in a single afternoon. If someone wanted to charge $80-100 for a 2-3 hour-long 16-bit platformer or action title today, they'd get laughed out of the room, yet that's what we paid for back in the early 90s. Today's gamers frequently don't factor in intangibles like replay value, and instead go by the length of a single playthrough (for single-player games, at least), and games last an order of magnitude longer on average now than they did 25-30 years ago when the cost of a new game was at its peak.

Sure, there's probably a few notable examples you can point to where a game has less content on-disc than a game in the same series did in the past, but in general video games are one of the best value propositions right now in terms of what you get for your money.

I've had Halo 5 since launch. It has had "loot box"-style MTX since day one in the form of its "Req Packs." I have never once spent a single solitary cent on them. Granted, it's the only multiplayer game I've played a substantial amount of this generation that actually has microtransactions, but still. I have never felt compelled to dole out cash to MS to buy any Req Packs. Then again, Halo 5 isn't particularly aggressive about it, either, and the Req system is still generous enough to where you're never hurting for power weapons or vehicles.

Of course, there's always the option of not buying games with aggressive microtransactions. Aside from Halo, I don't really play multiplayer games, and I do not play "live service" games at all. I tend to stick to single-player experiences that are devoid of aggressive monetization schemes.

Microtransactions are NEVER optional. Games are being made deliberately worse to entice people to buy them to increase the fun of the game to a level it's supposed to be at. That isn't optional, no matter if you buy them or not. Having less fun games is an underappreciated cost.

"True Gamers don't care about Frames Per Second." ... "I can't really tell the difference (between 30/60fps)"

*closes video*

We must be playing different games because I cannot remember when I have purchased any DLC or Microtransactions.  I also cannot remember any specific game I have purchase where I felt I needed to purchase those items in order to gain the fun I wanted from a game.  Could it be that this feeling of having to purchase the Microtransactions or DLC is purely your own view that you have to have it instead of actually being a condition to enjoy a game.

While technically true, this narrative just serves publishers to increase their ingame costs. Games might have become cheaper on their initial price but at the same time they lost content that has to be purchased separately. On top of that we have online subscription costs on consoles.

I'd say things have not really changed much as games can be cheap but they can also be pretty expensive, which is the same as in the earlier gaming years.

Good for you, but you do know that you're not the only person on the planet, right? Microtransactions are in games to be bought and every single game that contains them will be altered to make it more likely for people to buy them. Which means every game will be made deliberately worse for the sake of selling them. It's no surprise that the most critically acclaimed games don't have them. Cool if you love to play games that could be more fun but have been made deliberately worse, but I don't.

That's not even going into how they're exploiting and ruining vulnerable and unsuspecting people, but I guess that's just those people's fault for not being as super smart and mentally stable as you are.