One thing to keep in mind is that it is very likely that game company's contracts with game stores (Gamestop, Best Buy, whatever) may prohibit them from selling the game for cheaper and undercutting them. I don't think electronic distribution is even close to large enough yet that they can start to ignore the brick and mortar stores yet, as the sales are too great, but the brick and mortar stores are likely saying "look, we'll sell your games, but you can't come out and sell for less than us."
That's generally why you can't always get stuff cheaper if you go direct to the source than to a middleman retailer; Even if you're buying a hard copy of a game directly from the game company instead of a download, by definition the costs would be lower since they're not having to pay for distribution to the game stores or account for the middlemen making their own profits. It would just be shady business if you sell a game to Gamestop to sell for $50, then come around and become their greatest market threat by selling the exact same game for less.
This basic principle applies to most/all industries. The higher prices on downloads or direct sales aren't necessarily a product of them being able to sell it for full price and being greedy, they're a product of them being required to sell for full price because of their distribution contracts.
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