Sure, in the past the computing era was different and tech corporates could get away with charging a lot for their development tools. But even then, you did not have to depend solely on them and there was a healthy competition in this vertical - Borland easily comes to mind. During the Java boom, their JBuilder used to be a top selling product till Eclipse came out. Open source and internet changed the game. Today Visual Studio also has a free version and even Apple is forced to offer their development tools for free because otherwise developers will prefer the free opensource options, than pay the exorbitant price they used to demand.

Weren't XBox development kits up around ten thousand dollars back in the days before the App Store changed the rules?