There has been a lot of discussion lately on app prices and the ability to price sustainably in the App Store. Michael Jurewitz has a nice 5-part series on the basics starting here, Marco Arment discussed it (and I rebutted), and Ben Thompson wrote about subscriptions (where I also added my two cents).

I have been contemplating another factor, though, in average software prices: the price of hardware. When systems cost thousands of dollars, spending a few hundred per title was no big deal. In those days, I believe, Lotus 1-2-3 was somewhere around $400. But as the systems dropped in price so did software prices. The Office suite went from $200 per app to $200 for four apps, and then the basics (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) were available for  $100 (Home and Student edition).

The same is true for mobile software. When devices were $500-1000 spending $30-100 for a software product was no big deal. But now smartphones are free to $200 (user perspective, with contract). The expected price of software also dropped. Now high end prices are $4.99. Furthermore, I believe this effect is only pertinent for traditional software purchases, those one-off buys that made up the software world all those years. Other models may be immune.

—

There have always been very expensive software packages as well, mostly because there was either limited competition or aimed at a niche that would pay or both.