From this gamasutra article, one indie developer experimenting with their DRM said: "[...] for every 1,000 pirated copies we eliminated, we created 1 additional sale." Now all we need are the numbers of total pirated copies (the dev in that article has 92 percent piracy rate on their games) and the cost of creating/licensing DRM.

Damn, you're spot on. I was really looking forward to it, too. At least there's the first game..albeit it's a poor port..

Didn't know that 1 was still being supported.
I know it's still being played a lot.

Diablo II is as well -- a patch was released last year and I think a new one is supposed to be coming soon, upping the resolution and other stuff.

Been saying for years that tchotckes and packaging are excellent ways to keep people buying the legit article of games or music. People will pay extra for a well made product.
I've rebought many cd's that had better packaging, additional songs etc. Why it took so long for the gaming industry to grasp that leading with the carrot is better than wearing out the stick I'll never know.
But then most of us here know this because we support a company that supports us and provides little extras. Now if we could only get them to host or torrent mods. :)

WARNING: Approaching Wall Of Text
I agree with the sentiment but not the specifics. Packaging is pretty and all but unless you're an unusual sort (or baby), you open the box, get the fun stuff out and toss the box away. Likewise trinkets are utimately a short term "hey cool" thing that has no lasting value and only puts the price of the game up.
I do rather like the inclusion of things like soundtracks and there's a strange part of me that can't resist a cloth map but for the most part I like the value added stuff to be ingame.
Frankly I think there's 3 real types of people when it comes to piracy & purchasing
Honest: Buy it
Poor: Do without or pirate until they can buy it
Dishonest: Pirate it
I really don't see the inclusion of an exclusive lego sam fisher (bumping up the price by $10 or by $200 if his little lego night vision goggles really work) being likely to turn Dishonest to Honest and the more the price goes up, the more danger the Poor will slip into the Dishonest category
Perhaps to cater to the Poor market, something akin to a DVD model is needed. Much of the time with large films, you can get a basic film only DVD with no extras for a moderately smaller price. Perhaps games could do something similar, offer packages of JUST the single player game and another of JUST the multiplayer game in addition to the complete pack (of course this complete pack would be cynically hiked up by $10 with no additional content and called special just to milk more cash). That way they could sell the single player component of say COD39 to the half a dozen people who buy it for the offline game and then sell the multiplayer component to the thronging masses who only get it for the fragfest deathmatch. If people want both, they can buy the complete edition.
Sure it'd require more work but it shouldn't really be THAT much harder to segregate the 2 elements and the ability to sell more units at a reduced price could well counter the costs of the extra work

This is why you'll never be a businessman. :)

Publishers are whining about high piracy, but they dont see how funny their pricing is? 50 euro for a game which is short, bugged or crappy port from console? No thx.

Sometimes they're short, bugged AND are a crappy console port, thats like 3 times the value!

Just be glad that they don't charge more for the "extras".

Actually Ubi should rather question the quality of their games rather than piracy to explain their bad sales.

I think you've forgot one:
Honest but DRM-hater: pirate until they can buy it without DRM

AliasAlpha: Part of the reason people, including myself, always liked LPs (or records if you like) was the lyrics on the inside and the care taken to make a nice package. Part of the reason for the resurgence in vinyl is this plus the belief that it just sounds better as well as a tactile thing. In general it sure seems as if digipaks do better with the consumer than jewel cases. There's a pride of ownership there that isn't with a generic jewel case.
Likewise a cardboard box with a sleeved dvd is not only less impressive it is more of a ripoff than a dvd-cased one.
Re: tchotchkes - people are still talking about the pewter figurines given away in past versions of Command and Conquer. People on newegg bitch when their HIS IceQ card doesn't come with the HIS branded screwdriver. It isn't just you and cloth maps. But then what rocks one person's socks isn't necessarily what rocks others either. People will buy the special editions of games from Singapore just to get various doodads. So it may not be rational but it certainly is a factor. I'm not holding up the Splinter Cell thing because it costs too much but hey - it is cool that there are nightvision goggles. It just doesn't have to be that big (cost-wise).
I don't think your idea of segregating the market will work. Really all it will mean is that those people who paid anything for game A will feel justified in torrenting the rest anyway.
I'm in agreement with DarthKaal because I often fit this description as well. I do not want drm in my games. Period. If the scene makes a game usable (and we have seen that GOG uses those very same no-cd patches as provided by the scene) you have no beef with so called pirates.

I used to have a bunch of Ultima games which had nice manuals, cloth maps and little metal trinkets.
I tried to find some of these on eBay more recently, and the prices were quite high... but I still thought about going for it.
These things do get people buying, I would much rather have a well-presented box with a couple of free goodies inside than a standard plastic DVD box with nothing but the game disc.