mystral: ...If you take into account the time you'll spend playing each game, then video games are pretty much the cheapest form of entertainment out there ...
Not quite true of all products. For instance:
I paid upwards of £35 at launch for GTA4, I have had the misery of playing it for a few hours years after buying it when I got a cracked copy, as the released one failed to work even with R* support. Thus, factoring in the waste of hours of my time getting the bstard to work initially, the cost of it, etc. it cost a fair bit more, and caused more hassle than it was worth.
Juxtapose this with Mount & Blade, which I also brought just after release and have since brought Warband and all the others, and the hundreds of hours spent on that and on the back of modders hard work, I would say I am well in debt regarding that game.
Two clear ends of the spectrum in terms of cost versus return. And they were the two that jumped first to mind, there are literally thousands of examples of each and at each point within the range. Man of war corsair, couple of hours playing (sorry correct that, watching all the bugs, the dreadful animation, the poor levels, lack of anything to do etc.) it for full release.
Cheapest form of entertainment would be sleeping! Followed maybe by gardening (as you don't really need all the faff), or walking (climbing/running etc.). In fact, when you total up hardware + software then gaming starts to become quite expensive versus watching tv or film, or reading, or most things.
What I am saying is to evaluate cost versus merit, where most publishers just chuck an arbitrary amount on based on current largest price they can get away with. Disney for instance, all other old games are going for £5, lets pop ours out at £6, because we can artificially inflate the market to our own ends.