The price of a AAA game, at least in the console space, has been fixed at $60 since 2006. According to the official inflation numbers that's equivalent to about $73.50 in current dollars, which is to say that in real terms the price of a AAA game has dropped about 22% over the last decade. If you, like me, suspect that the official inflation numbers significantly under-report the actual state of the economy then the equivalent price of a AAA game in 2017 dollars would be even higher. I'm pretty sure that development costs have not remained fixed in the same way. (I'm a software developer, although not in the games industry, and my nominal income certainly hasn't stayed the same since 2006.) If we really want the micro-transaction BS to go away we should be willing to accept an inflation adjustment in the base price of a game. If you cut a company's real revenue per game by 22%, they're going to try to get some of that back in some other way, just like you would if your income got cut by the same amount.
I can't help but wonder to what extent CD Projekt RED's business model works because of the relative cost of living in Poland. It wouldn't surprise me if their cost of development is lower than that of US-based developers. The inflation-based revenue hit probably doesn't hurt them as badly, so they have less need to make up the difference.