> Some good points deleted....
I think digital delivery is something that can bring this price down a lot.
The downside to Digital Delivery is that for most devices this gives the hardware manufacturer a "lock" on distribution to completely control price (witness Apple, although they've been smart about it and not gouged). There is no longer any competition (except between H/W manufacturers) they can set the price on stuff and there is no competition among content producers or used markets, or retailers, anymore, once established, the manufacturer can completely dictate retail prices to the developers.
So, the cynical side of me suspects that system providers will simply use the lack of physical media to boost profit margins and pocket the difference rather than significantly dropping the "standard" price for goods once consumers are locked in. I would imagine the millions of copies that console games sell allow a significant economy of scale for manufacturers.
You'll also probably see more of this trend where the initial game is half complete/low content and then you buy the rest of it in bits and pieces via DLC, too. We'll see if they drop the price in that scenario, so far the track record has not been good.
I agree about development costs going up for developers.
It seems that if the manufacturers are eliminating manufacturing and distribution costs for the publishers, that just leaves marketing as their only really useful function (assuming they are decoupled from the "studio").