"Sleazy territory" is an unhelpfully emotive term. State it in a more dispassionate form, and you might possibly start to see why companies don't really regard it as something particularly underhand.Not going to say there aren't games that don't deserve better sales, but thats also not an excuse to head into sleazy territory.
They kind of go together with my response. I'm not saying make every game $80. I'm saying look at your budget and the game you are making and utilize that sliding scale more. I keep hearing games with some of the bigger budgets are RPG's and i really wouldn't say those games are lighting up the casual sales charts to begin with. Those are games that if the game deserves it and you are allocating a large budget then by all means charge $80 for it. That's what I paid for Final Fantasy 3 when it came out for SNES.
I don't think *enough* people would willingly pay more for the quality. They might possibly be coaxed into paying more for the *name*, but that's not the same thing, is it?
You could perhaps sell Mass Effect 3 for $80 and people might go for it over a $60 Kingdoms of Amalur, but would people Kingdoms of Amalur sell well enough for $80 over a $60 Mass Effect 3?
Ultimately, you've got to be aware when budgeting and pricing a title that you're not developing it within a vacuum; there's other games out there, and if you're going to be on the shelf with a $60 popular title, you're going to need one hell of a convincing selling point to make someone fork out $80 for yours. Meanwhile the $60 popular title is going to be just fine because it's, well, popular already.
If you sell the game for $80, you're not going to get the same number of sales you do at $60, and *that* needs to be factored into the budget too. I suspect $60 is possibly the natural 'sweet spot' for titles because it's a helpful benchmark of 'acceptable cost' that you can plan your budget relative to.