But you can get hundreds of hours from a f2p game, so that's the competition $70 games have. Then there's older triple a titles that are cheaper, and there's so many that it's not possible to have played all of them. Then epic giveaways, game bundles, indies, etc.
And price increases push more consumers away from impulse purchases. And that can lead to them becoming patient gamers once they see not buying at release isn't a big deal.
Paid games hasn't kept them from not having aggressive microtransactions themselves and sometimes worse. And there's so many sources of games now beyond big publishers. The gaming landscape just isn't the same as in the past that it can get away with setting whatever price they want and expect to turn a profit. The old hour of value stance isn't as relevant, and is more likely to lead to bombs even amongst triple A publishers with their vast marketing budgets with that attitude. There's way more options now that people don't have to settle.