They are expensive because of the fuckhuge PR budgets
They have huge PR budgets because that's how people hear about your game, and thus buy it. The end result is that you get
more game for your $60 rather than less.
If they spend $10 million on promotion it's so that they can count on $20 million extra revenue. So, they're only going to spend extra on promotion as long as it increases sales revenue faster than it increases costs. The end result, is that total cost per copy is reduced. And when they're initially budgeting the game, they take the increased revenue that marketing gives them into account. It's not an either-or situation. Development costs * marketing costs = profits. So, a big marketing budget gives them the leeway to make a big game. Take away the marketing, and then expect sales crash and they slash the development budget to compensate.
If you're not happy with that, buy indie games only, but don't complain about what they have to do to make games like GTA V viable.
And game prices HAVE gone up. Not only has there been inflation, meaning that those 60 dollars cost way more than they did 10 years ago
Uh, what? That's like the exact opposite of how inflation works. Hourly wages rise over time. Prices rise over time. If an item still costs $60 now and did 10 years ago, that's a
price drop in inflation-adjusted terms.
collectors editions. super colectors editions. deluxe editions. complete editions. ultimate editions. olympian editions. dlc
Yeah, just buy the regular edition then. People who pitch in extra for those silly collectors versions are in fact subsidizing things so that the base price doesn't have to rise in line with inflation.
As for making money hand over fist: studios and publishers go broke all the time. THQ for example went broke in 2014. Telltale Games closing earlier this year, etc etc.
Even EA, their profit margin is only about 6% of their revenue. That's ... not actually very high in terms of different types of businesses. A slight reduction in profitability would be enough to send them into the red. If you knock off 3% of revenue on all their games then that would in fact halve their profits.