The games-in-box-time wasy great. And some question:Could the planned expansion packs be official (but optional) content if they are good enough.
Shoutbox archive
The Witcher Standard Edition is like Collectioner's Edition of most games nowadays and is dozen times cheaper. This is how boxes should look like. Collectioner's Edition of a Blizzard game? Costs $20 dollars more than normal game and you get an ugly unique skin and avatar. Something wrong must have happened at some point in the game industry.
I'm pretty sure there's still some game developers who share free demo versions of their products (TT Games for example). Huge boxes for a game today isn't so comfortable. Maybe if this is some kind of collector's edition box with additional content/figure etc.
I remember that games had free demo version, so you could look if game will run on your computer and if you like the gameplay.
Original Doom was released as shareware. Literally 33% of the full game was free. Good times.
Remember the times when games were sold in cool boxes and there were actual expansion packs instead of worthless DLCs adding a stupid skin for $1.99? Good times.
I do not think I am going to be able with my coding skills, to program an entire expansion pack alone.