A good selling title I believe. Nintendo is one of the top contenders for console gaming besides Microsoft and Sony. And you don't /have/ to buy new too. It's $40 for a new game, but pre-owned is infinitely cheaper ($11-$29). It all depends on where you buy from.
For a lot of people, games are well worth the money even ten years after they've been released. If they're in the box brand new, don't games have a tendency to go up in value? Say you had a copy of.. (*5 minutes of Google Searching Later*) Legend of Zelda: A link to the past. Looking on Google now, Factory sealed copies are selling for $200 - $300 dollars a pop. Shoot, there are some listings for
even more. Copies found at the store are still $30 - $40.
I'm curious where you found this law that games
must depreciate in value, because I can't for the life of me find anything on that subject. I mean, yeah, over time the value will decrease, but there's nothing I can find that says a game must be sold at a lower price.
Half the time, it's not even Nintendo that sets the prices. Game shops buy the games at a price (cost) from a vendor (and probably not straight from Nintendo, but another warehouse) and then set a new price for the shelf (retail). The point of the retail price is to recuperate the cost price, and also turn a profit.
If a game is doing well in store, and is still high in demand, the store will of course keep the price as high as possible to continue bringing in a profit. If a game does poorly, or is so severely outdated that only a select few will purchase (say, E.T. for the Atari), chances are, the store will keep the price low to move it out faster.
Regardless of your personal opinions on how the game industry works, there's very little you can do to control it. You can, however, control where you buy your games. If $40 doesn't tickle your fancy, then try buying used as well.
And Halo 2 isn't a bad game. It's half decent. :3