What do you mean? This is a digital downloadable good and their sales have grown massively, bringing in massively more profit with the same team sizes. Even if teams grew, the gaming market has outgrown that by several sizes in last years.
The profits these publishers have recorded in last years are staggering - raising game prices is pure fleecing.
My curiosity is that there's some normalized change in game pricing, but it's really dependent on both inflation and increased size of gaming market.
Since unit costs are so low for digital goods, if you have +5% inflation over a period and +15% gamers, the price of AAA games technically should have gone down to maintain profits. (Assuming you hold development costs static, which isn't true but simplifies the problem)
I'm not sure what that inflation-TAM number would be. Maybe games are getting "more profitable" (at the same price point), maybe less.
Since there's almost no cost to the production of a sold item, all costs are salaries, social benefits, office space. Things that correlate directly to the number of people working. All these costs rise with the inflation.
You're right that more sales could mean lower prices, but I don't know the numbers. I would not have assumed CoD is so much more popular now than 10 years ago.
The profits these publishers have recorded in last years are staggering - raising game prices is pure fleecing.