Part of the value (for me) that Dom3 comes with is multi-platformability without loss of features (iirc, Oblivion was "dumbed down" to accomadate the console people). Granted, I have other hobbies than computer gaming and do not have the most current knowledge of the computer gaming industry. However, I feel safe in thinking that Dom3 is in the vast, vast minority of games that get released with Win / Linux and Mac distributions at market release all in the same distribution. Dom2 even had a Solaris executable.
To this end, I bought Dom2 before being sure I liked it to support Linux gaming development. (Please don't tell KO that I am currently playing Dom2 on Windows...
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This multi-platformability is way more than the big manufacturers provide with their supposed bigger and better resources. And when the big mfg's do provide multi-platformability, they often force the consumer to buy a separate instance of the game for each platform. Why should I have to buy a separate copy of a game to play on my Linux machine when I already possess a license to run the game and will only be playing on the Linux machine xor the Windows machine? In this respect, multi-platformability, Dom3 has the bigger mfg's beat hands down.
I do agree that the pricing for Dom2 could have come down a bit, especially after Dom3 development was announced.
As for graphics, I want be able to play the game on my notebook, which does not have graphics upgradability. I got stiffed on this by Civ4. A turn-based strategy game, in my opinion, should at the very least have an "ugly mode" to allow for dated graphics cards. Civ4 has nowhere near the price per unit time spent playing value (for me) as games with limited replay such as the KOTOR series for just this reason.