Seriously. My roommate buys new games constantly. Most of them he plays for a day or two, declares them to be the "worst (insert genre or adjective) game ever!", and then throws them at me. Me, I am a gaming gourmand. If it will run on my computer and has a sword or a gun somewhere, I'll probably play it beginning to end.
But Dom3 requires refined taste to truly appreciate. And, it will require a very special effort to surpass.
Is Dom3 a niche game? Yes it is. Will it ALWAYS be a niche game? Of course it will. Until someone, anyone (I mean ANYONE, Galactic Civ comes the closest in recent times) produces an AI that can grasp a game well enough to give a thouthful player a run for their money - then there will absolutely be a "turn based PBEM strategy game" niche. While many people continue to play Dom3 SP, and find ways to keep it interesting and enjoyable, the niche that it is most catering to, is the PBEM crowd (which I was not part of until I joined this forum). Now, since the PBEM has always been and always will be a small segment of the game, what is the incentive to cut price.
Net effect - lowering price would mostly only serve to massively increase the number of low-brow twitch gamers who accidentally buy a "bargain bin" title, and then spam other forums and review sites with their complaints about the "terrible graphics", the "lack of tactical battles", and how they think it's "still too expensive, and they wished they had only wasted $10".
Now, that being the probable outcome of this issue, the result for Shrapnel/IW is - one time jump in sales, equating to very minor increase in profit due to slashing of margins, followed my irreversible sales slump caused by the glut of negative reviews covering up the glowing reviews posted by the intended purchaser of the game.
Now shush, that's 3 times I have won this argument. The first stage of insanity is denial. Move on to anger or something.