In general I agree with you, but sometimes affordability isn't possible due to a limited market size.
Adobe Photoshop is the best example in that even if it was only $50 (instead of $2000), the market size is limited by those who want edit photos.
Adobe's answer to this was to make a student version and sell it for 15%+/- of the original price and allow those that want to edit photos but cannot afford the software still buy it for a lower price.
They further versioned by releasing Light Room.
They realized that they needed to make it affordable, but kept the DRMs in place and worked hard to make PS harder to copy. I'm sure it is still possible, but at $400 (student version) you get a lot of value and it becomes easier than pirating.
I've always thought photoshop was made intentionally easy to pirate, as an unfair competitive advantage to keep other companies out of the market (companies and serious professionals buy it--everyone else pirates it).
CS5 didn't even require a crack, you just have install the trial version with a fake serial and edit your hosts file to stop it calling home.
Maybe it is relatively easy to crack compared with games, but non programmers like me don't even know what host files are. That being said, if it is relatively easy to crack you are probably right. It would be financial suicide to compete with them since you couldn't limp in with a weak program. Great point.
Adobe Photoshop is the best example in that even if it was only $50 (instead of $2000), the market size is limited by those who want edit photos.
Adobe's answer to this was to make a student version and sell it for 15%+/- of the original price and allow those that want to edit photos but cannot afford the software still buy it for a lower price.
They further versioned by releasing Light Room.
They realized that they needed to make it affordable, but kept the DRMs in place and worked hard to make PS harder to copy. I'm sure it is still possible, but at $400 (student version) you get a lot of value and it becomes easier than pirating.