You won't convince that audience. They want to continue to defend price hikes and while if Xbox or Nintendo raised their prices instead, they would be the first ones to assault the idea. Its a sad reality and is why these companies will continue to get away with it.

How much do you expect, Starfield, Fallout 5 & Elderscrolls 6 to be?
You sure all of them will launch at 60$?

They are big single player games, equal in size and scope, to the big titles of sony's single player games.
Would you be surprised if MS increased prices to 70$ on those titles?

In these times with insane energy prices, and heating prices.... 70$ does hit harder though.
It sucks, but like if its needed by them to keep makeing games of the same scope, I can understand.

I've always admitted that I dont buy day 1.... often looking for good bargins instead.
So I get it, 70$ is alot, so is 60$ tbh, but end of the day its a bussiness thats gotta turn a profit.
if that means people like me have to buy late, when there are bargins or cheaper prices, thats just how it is.

I feel like the OP believes he is providing provocative insight when really he is pointing out commen knowledge. Most of his arguments are basically "companies love making money." Wow, impressive. I can't wait to see next week's episode on "do fish love water."

People fail to understand the difference between making more money and making enough money to survive.

And big corporations only care about the former.  This isn't a surprise, or at least shouldn't be.

As customers, we need to support the latter not the former.

Inflation absolutely does matter. The further back you go, the more purchasing power a dollar has. It's just a simple matter of fact.

In 1960, a new car cost something like $2600, but a dollar had ten times the purchasing power in 1960 so that's $26,000 in today's dollars, about the starting price of most popular non-luxury sedans today (e.g., a Toyota Camry starts at just under $26k). In 1960, $26,000 would have gotten you a new Rolls Royce. A Big Mac was only 45 cents when it debuted in 1967, but now it's $4 and nobody bats an eye. Gasoline getting up to over $1/gallon in 1979 was beyond painful at the time, but would be beyond dirt cheap today. $400 for a game console today is affordable, but 30 years ago would be viewed as obscenely expensive (see the Neo-Geo).

Rarely do you see sticker prices remain relatively unchanged for multiple decades, but video games are one of those things. The only thing besides console games that I can think of from the early 90s that had roughly the same sticker price then as today is pizza.

If you want to bring up other economic metrics, well, average inflation-adjusted earnings for workers has remained relatively static since the early 80s. However, stagnant does not mean declining. Yes, some things have outpaced inflation, e.g., housing over the past 20 years or so. But many other consumer goods are technically more affordable today than they used to be. At least prior to the recent bout of higher-than-average inflation, some necessities like food, clothing, and electricity represent no more of a share of someone's income today than they did decades ago, perhaps even less according to some metrics. Major appliances and consumer electronics are far easier on the wallet today than they were when I was a kid, and in many cases you get far more bang for your buck than you used to (e.g., the cost per inch of screen for TVs has plummeted). To go back to video games, if someone working minimum wage wanted to buy a new copy of Street Fighter II for the SNES in 1992, they had to work 70% more hours than a minimum wage worker this year would have to work to buy a copy of God of War: Ragnarok for the PS5 when it releases.

TL;DR: You absolutely cannot ignore inflation. If video game prices kept up with inflation, then even ignoring cartridge-based games and sticking with disc-based titles they'd be at least $90-100 brand new today. Video games are more affordable than they've ever been, even if some publishers have upped the price for the first time in 17 years.

Microsoft is making $70 billion+ of net profits annually... if you're all that concerned about corporations making ridiculous amounts of profits, then perhaps you should be more vocal against Microsoft.

They arent the ones raising game and hardware prices.