Notch really IS milking this cash cow for all it's worth. He waits until JUST when the MC craze is at it's peak to say "from now on you need to pay for every update. Nyeh."
You claim the MC "craze" is at its peak right now, and this is why Notch is deciding its time to bring it out of Beta to enact the next phase of his moneymaking scheme, without providing any explanation of why you think that. Is the game not ready for Beta? Has it been ready for Beta for some time? Where are you getting the information that MC's popularity is at its peak right now?
I'm not denying it's cheep. Right now.
Think. Right now I believe Notch said it's half full price. That means 20E when beta is out. The "expansions" could be 5E tops. Imagine how many big updates there will be between now and whenever Notch drops MC. Now, solve 5X+20.
Now do you get where I'm going?
Then we get right back to square one, which is "people are going to buy this game, then buy the expansions for it, and that will add up to a very large amount of money." This is what the entire second half of my post was addressing- if it's worth the money to begin with, and the expansions are worth the money, there's no reason to bitch about how much they cost together because they're worth it. If one or both of those isn't true, you don't buy it because it's not worth it. Your entire argument here is either predicated on buying shit you don't want because other people have it, or based on the notion that if something used to be cheaper it's automatically now too expensive. Either is ridiculous and requires having extreme jealousy issues.