MajicMan: 1. It makes it possible to try argument: This is what demos are for, shareware and game rentals all cover the try before you buy. If people like the game you are out the revenue and profit of the full purchase for the cost of a rental at most.
Demos, shareware and game rentals hardly exist anymore for most games, unless you abuse Steam's refund policy as a trial service. If creating demos would be more profitable than sales with high discounts, there would be more demos and less sales. Game rentals can lead to the dev losing some revenue too and then the money they could have made goes to the third party who offered the rental service instead. Sure, from an idealistic viewpoint, these options might sound less devaluing than sales, but from a financial viewpoint they are obviously less profitable.
MajicMan:
2. When a product is so cheap, people will not give it a fair chance: A game might be great, but it may take 1-5 hours to get into and really understand and open up. If a person spends $40-$60 on a game, they are going to give it every chance to be liked. They will learn the mechanics, the gameplay and invest the time to understand the game.
At extremely low prices, people will not give the game a chance. If it is not instant gratification it is discarded and on to the next one. Often with negative reviews, and/or word of mouth about the game.
And if a product costs a lot of money, many people will not give it a chance
at all. And if they buy and try it and find it is not to their liking, the negative reviews will be all the more devastating because the users will be bitter about spending such a huge sum on something they do not enjoy or value, and they will feel scammed. And people will pay much more attention to bad reviews, too, because they will get more cautious about spending money on games if they are more expensive and buying one means not buying others and spending all your time with this one only.
You're arguing from an idealistic developer's point of view who values the perceived quality of a game higher than the customer's time and enjoyment. If I don't want to slog through boring beginnings in order to get to the good parts of a game, that's my choice, and I don't want to feel obliged to play a game I don't seem to enjoy just because I paid a lot of money for it, Stockholm syndrome style. As a customer, I actually like the possibility to quickly switch to something different if I don't enjoy my time with a game, I waste enough time with games in general, I don't need it to be with games someone else thinks I haven't recognized the value of yet, when it feels like unpaid work to me.
You're also arguing as if the high discount purchases would replace the full price purchases, when in truth they complement them. There are still enough customers who buy a game on release day at full price and spend hours to get into it; the sale revenue is an extra from people who otherwise might not have paid for the game at all.