Yes and they are doing that BECAUSE the industry charges so little for games, like the OP says.
Holy moly, it took me a while to remember what the fuck this whole topic was about, to be honest.
But I still stand by my point: That's exactly the industry charging a lot but in a roundabout, non-upfront way. And they know it works on enough people, which is why they do that. And they hire people who specifically design gameplay systems to coerce people to stay and pay again and again. The industry just got more clever about it.
Back when my parents bought me Tiberian Sun for like 100DM (My Mom needed a bit of convicing because she rightfully said that this was kinda expensive), I got a big ass box with a manual to read with all sorts of unit descriptions and lore shit on the backseat on the drive home . Then Westwood bothered, as they just always did, to make a whole setup app to install the game with all sorts of animations etc. to get you already invested in the lore and atmosphere of the game. And then the game itself was fucking complete and playable. No menu/account shit that already wanted you to buy DLC or other shit. No icons between missions that remind you that you could buy this or that.
That, I felt, was worth the money. Like I had bought something that felt like it was "a premium product", so to speak. If anything, prices at the very least remained the same but games feel (to me) like less valueable because the games present themselves to me like that.
And publishers all over the world report profit after profit (except for Embracer I guess, they fucked up). And the average profit margin per player is higher than it was before. So again, I think games are not way too cheap.