He transitioned 

I guess these friends of yours would have been happy for Nintendo to release the game for $40 with 20 tracks, charge $5 each for additional tracks and $1 per kart mods.

Mario Kart 8 delux launched with 48 tracks (@59.99$), and now upto 96 with the booster pass dlc (~24$).
Mario Kart World is launching with 32 tracks, at 80$.

Yeah base game for 40$ would have been much better, even with potentially slightly fewer tracks.

Wage increases in Germany (and probably many other European countries) are pretty close to inflation...
even slightly above inflation for people with lower income.

From 2017 to 2025, we had an inflation of 25.58 %.

I looked up the biggest collective bargining agreement in Germany, the "TvÖD" (collective agreement for the public service) which is relevant for millions of people and a pattern for similar agreements in other sectors. It is also very transparent comparing to other sectors.

I checked the salary increases for experience level 2 (which is reached very fast) and experience level 5 (which is usually reached after 10 years).

The lower income brackets (f.e. cleaning staff + janitors in schools / town halls) had salary increases since 2017 of 30 - 35 %.
The highest income brackets (f.e. deputy mayors in midsized towns + heads of departments) had salary increases since 2017 of 23 - 26 %:

But is still a fat piece of shit.

Well, this happened sooner than I thought and we didn't have to wait till next gen.
Due to this I had to change the title of the thread from "Gen 10 Edition" to "in 2025".

https://www.vgchartz.com/article/464586/microsoft-raises-the-price-of-xbox-consoles-games-and-accessories/

As the link states, Microsoft has followed suit and increased the prices in its whole range.
Xbox will have $80 games and price hikes on consoles and accessories.

Makes you wonder when Sony will come around and face the tariffs.

We certainly know what GTA 6's minimum asking price will be now lol. I wonder how quickly before other publishers will start to follow suit.

$100 is fair for GTA6

Games should be no more than 60 euro, I don't care about inflation, cost of living or if my income doubles. 69,99 is that boundary in the head where even a cent more is too much but 60 euro is the price point where it feels just right. This is for AAA games, 40 or 50 for AA game and indies are way overvaluing themselves quite often some as high as 30 euro like Void Bastards. Nonsense. Clair Obscur E33 is the only game I have felt good about buying at full price in a long time. Oblivion remaster too, I didn't feel bad purchasing it even though I'm not actively playing it, I'm glad I helped be apart of helping lock in big sales numbers for these games so the math works out better against 80-90 euro subpar sellers and tell the industry they don't need to spend so big on games, tighten the teams, make more games more often, diversify and reach into niches and hope for the best with new ideas. Try not to make all the kiney in the world and take a better slice of the pie in the end.