Came to mind because Mortal Kombat 1 is one of the greediest fighting games I’ve ever seen, with the recent announcement of a $12 Halloween fatality plus all characters + DLC adding up to $118, so I’m assuming it’s because Warner Bros/Netherrealm Studios just wants more bonus money, so I’m genuinely curious how that whole thought process came to be, and if there’s any way for society as a whole to counteract that, or is it simply built into capitalism and we’re stuck with this forever.
Edit: I didn’t buy MK1, just know people who did because I go to tournaments
Everything hits a balance. So long as there are people who want to spend money on bullshit, bullshit will be boought and bullshit will be priced higher and higher until people no longer want to buy that bullshit. if a company breaks this and raises their prices willy-nilly, they are either a monopoly, are price fixing with other companies, are colluding with government institutions to mandate their product, or are very stupid because no one will buy their product.
Applying this logic to Mortal Kombat 1, the company has decided that there are enough people willing to pay for characters and DLC to justify the price. If the company is competent, the price they landed on will be the one that gives them the most profit because it strikes the perfect balance between the number of people who buy it and the amount of money each person pays. if the price is any higher, they lose customers and lose money. if the price is any lower, there aren't enough extra people who would buy the product and so they lose money.
if the price feels high as a consumer, it's probably because they know you will pay. This can often happen with old and beloved franchises because competition can be hard to come by, as a sizable chunk of the audience doesn't just want the genre of the game or the theme of the game, but the intellectual property itself. however, as we've seen with star wars, if a company plays their hands too heavily they will destroy the franchise. the road to this destruction can be very profitable, again as seen with Star Wars, but it will destroy a consistent money printer.