[somenameforme]

And devs make a lot more money for it. Modern day devs justifiably complain about having to give ~30% of their revenue to Steam or app stores, but back in the day you'd be lucky to get some sort of deal like a 20% "royalty" on sales after 100% of your publisher's costs were covered. So for each $60 spent (which as I recall was a more common price tag) something like $5-$10 would make its way to the studio.

And physical media meant that as soon as your game or software was off store shelves your revenue went to $0. And even when it was on store shelves, if it was popular it'd rapidly end up in the million 2nd hand resale shops where it'd cycle through potentially multiple players and you'd again get $0.

Given how studios were dropping like flies back in the day, I don't think they were gouging at $60 - it was just a very different environment.