Excellent read, and you have made dozens of valid and intelligent point.Horticulture said:snip
To add on to your description, in my opinion the biggest question here is whether or not developers will feel the need to appeal to their fanbase by giving them what they want, or appeal to their wallets by taking away what they believe will reduce the probability of sequels selling amazingly well.
Many people have pirated the game not beacause they are cheap bastards, or beacuse they hate IW, but simply because they do not believe the game to be worth 60 hard earned dollars. If IW were to do one of those "pay what you want" deals (Which they obviously won't because they are mainstream greedy fucks), and people paid honestly what they thought it worth and not just 2 cents, I am certain that the range would fall between 15-25 dollars. That's what I would pay. The game simply doesn't have enough features and benefits that we PC gamers are used to, reducing the value for us completely! The SP was pathetic, obviously rushed and churned out, and the MP suffered from... well you know.
The main thing that developers need to see is that giving people what they want can sometimes actually be more profitable than the "Bobby Kotick" method of churning out sequels that everyone will buy, or sub-par DLC that everyone with half a brain WON'T buy.
Alas, until the console players realize that what they are playing could be so much better, or just brain up in general, we are looking at a bleak future for PC enthusiastic developers...
As Pink Floyd said, "Money is the root of all evil"