I've been thinking this over for a while now and a recent thread has made me thought about the issues further.  To recap, publishers are morons.  They overprice games that the regular person who are not die-hard fans will never buy any new fancy shiny $60 piece of software, no matter how hot/shiny/pink/unique/purple it is.  Games, while addictive, does not need to be physically produced, unlike drugs, to be enjoyed.  And to further prove that they are indeed idiotic morons, they've tried to counteract software piracy with the use of (everybody say it) more software.  What were these idiots thinking?  Software being soft will be malleable to changes and will eventually submit to the will of the collective hacker mind. 

Here I will discuss what I think will help the industry win over a lot of the people who have gone to the dark side.  Based on this site there is a core audience who will always buy legit, and kudos to you people.  And so I have classified it buyers according to three criteria:

1. People who never buy pirated games

2. People who sometimes pirate games

3. People who always pirate when it is possible

The point is winning over #2 and a portion of #3 to buy legit.  Since I have already argued that the presence of pirated content for a system may convince the crowd from #2 and #3 to actually purchase the system.  Folks from #2 (and some from #3) only want to buy games that they think are worth buying, that's why they never go all legit.  They don't want to spend good money to buy crap, how can companies win them over?  Sell really cheap partial games, on discs or for download.  These games would not be demos, they would actually be playable and would represent about 20-40% of the actual game.  The teaser factor will always bait them in if it's good, and the company also stands to profit from people who would never have paid for their games.

The way I see it, people always want to do what they think is right.  When they see games are unreasonably priced some of them will turn to piracy it because to them there is no other choice.  But if you present a reasonable alternative they will prefer something that will silence the inner naggings of their conscience.  Point in case the Apple Music Store's customers, I bet those guys would probably be downloading those songs illegally if Apple did not open their store.

It's believed spore has been torrented about a million times now.

They still won't make much money off me. I mostly buy legal used games for 1/3 to 1/10 of the original price of the game.

It's a shame that the anti-piracy publishers are actually targetting you as well.

I guess there are still people naive enough to think that piracy is all done in countries that are strict on piracy laws.  I'll let Darwin take care of this.

With some HD games having a hard time breaking even, I don't think they are overpriced at all.

Just like anything in this world...if you enjoy it, you pay for its asking price. Used games are meant for people that cant afford new. I bought Frontlines: Fuel of war for 9.99 today. Game is like 8 months old...

People just get greedy and think that they are entiteled to videogames when they can't afford them. You don't see people asking mercedes and BMW cars for free...despite them beign very overpriced thanks to their car badge.

True,used game sales are a real beneffit for consumers and piracy is what`s hurting the publishers/developers,not used game sales. DRM is what`s making piracy look great,and not...again...used game sales. The used game sales are being stopped(or tried to at least) with the introduction of DRM,but this ampliffies the piracy and losses.

I disagree.  Most HD games are at $60, regardless of its contents its $60.  I can understand the big blockbuster games being $60 but what about Iron Man or other stupid games that nobody is really excited in getting?  I've been to gamestop recently and then a guy looked at a game then looked at its tag and said "shit I'm not paying $60 for a game."  While the development costs of such games may be expensive, the production of the disc itself is not as expensive as another controller (which as of now costs less than a game).  Have you ever thought of how much they'll sell in terms of volume if they actually hit the price sweet spot?  People who buy used games would think "Hell I can't wait 10 months for this game to be $20, I'm gonna buy it now" and some people strapped for cash might actually look at it and think "hey this is not too bad, at least tomorrow I'll still have money for gas."  And hardcore gamers are probably gonna go berserk and buy 2 or more games a month.  You can never tell but with the current price of games, you can bet the game publishers are missing out on a lot by adhering blindly to $60 price point that only a few people will buy.

You see, that's why I think the game publishers are idiots.  They're adding to development cost by including DRM which makes the consumers angry.  Its like they're arm wrestling their customers and telling them they have no choice but to buy our software at a price we choose.  Then suddenly they stumble like a bunch of morons tinkering with a shiny piece of technology that everybody and their dog rejected.  Instead why don't they sell at the price that everybody will find reasonable earn profit by selling in volume.