It was time that someone stood up and crush all hopes related to cheaper titles and Electronic Arts senior director of in-game advertising Shelby Cox was just the person to do it:
"Advertising is not going to be that silver bullet to make everything okay," Cox told NextGen during a phone interview. "We’re looking at a lot of different things to offset these rising dev costs. Next-gen dev costs are astronomical. We’re looking for any way to try and offset that, and in-game advertising is one of those things."
And, if things weren’t already clear enough, she stressed out one more time:
"[…]do I think in-game advertising is going to bring the price of games down in the next year or so? Definitely not. We’ve got to find new ways to make money off of those packaged goods and our content."
To give you the worst of news, NPD already reported software sales going up, a clear sing that most buyers are eager to spend on games. Therefore, there’s no business reason to cut down on prices, at least for the time being.