I think the new danger might be to point out that a number of games are now charging brick and mortar prices, but then adding free to play pricing structures on top. But even in those cases, price is whatever the market will bear.
I think this is the compromise option. Where the devs don't put in forced item mall cause there is a box top cost. And then just leave item mall for mainly visual or modest help.
GW2 did that, upfront cost, then secondary option with item mall. Not a think in the item mall was needed, adn they didn't tweak the game to make the item mall a requirement at all. Even provided players with options to use game currency converted to item mall if they wanted to invest the extra time.
So it didn't have that grind / feel to it, yet a bunch of people bought the reskin tools, fireworks boxes, halloween customes, etc. None of it had any impact beyond being fun for the players, for those that have a few bucks, extra here and there, it was just icing on the cake for Devs.
So by having the upfront costs, devs don't have to put in the pay to win / grind model as much.
Now in regards to games making grindy or frustrating content. They have to, or they have to come up with some constant struggle to force players into playing the game.
This means you either make something grindy or you build out a highly robust PvP aspect. Or both. Problem is players are super smart, creative, abusive, and coordinated beyond imagination.
This means any content you create will take 2 weeks maybe 3 to consume if you are lucky. Think my guild was able to go through almost all the content in GW2 in about 1 months time. After that we figured out their crafting power level, and had all of our alt slots maxed level and geared up within 2 months of game launch.
Only thing left for us to do was the PvP. Which while was fun for 3 months or so cause of the leader boards. Note mainly just for leaderboard bragging rights. That we were top notch guild, deals. Did we stay around that long.
So to recap, with a subscription you would of gotten 10 bucks a month, for 4 months from 30 people before they left. That is $1200 bucks from subscriptions. By the time you work, billing costs, support costs, account maintenance, and server bandwidth costs etc. the devs didn't make a dime. if they went subscription based.
So that is why you see upfront costs. So got $1500 out of us for game purchase. Now cause we wanted to rush guild creation, which cost decent game money nothing horrible, but we wanted it on day one for cordination reasons, and cause we wanted a commanders rune, once again wasn't bad in context of game, we just wanted it day 1. The guild spent something like 600 bucks or more on day one to get all of that stuff. Then for most of us we dropped 5 bucks on extra inventory. Not that it was needed, they gave you like 40 slots, without buying. We just wanted extra slots cause we were power farming. Didn't want to constantly have to port back and forth. Minor task but we didn't want the hassle. I mean took like 1 extra minute per trip, so wasn't an advantage to have the extra slots, we just didn't want to waste the minute. So we bought slots. Then most of us spent 10 bucks to change our gear around how we wanted it to look. Nothing special about it, just different appearance, was all.
So to kind of pull it into perspective. With out the devs adding any grind, or dumb mechanics to make gamers life hell, just by providing a fast pass to the front of the line to say. (note amusement parks do same thing). The made far more money.
Option A: just subscription
Income: $1200
Option B: Upfront box cost no subscription no item mall
Income: 1500
Option C: upfront box cost, no subscription, with item mall
Income: 1500(box sales), $600 rush on guild stuff, $150 on extra inventory slots, $300 on changing outfit appearance.
Total : 2550
So by just providing a small fast track in item mall, a minor nicety but not requirement items they nearly doubled the income they would of gotten. Doesn't seem like much but I know of 10 guilds on our server alone that were doing the same thing we were to thats. 2550-1500 about 1k extra times 10 guilds. 10k extra dollars they made in 3 months of us playing. Just cause of a few minor item malls. They didn't build the game around it, didn't penalize or force players for to use it. Just made life faster for those that did. And not even that much faster, we got guild setup day 1. Most normal guilds had it the "hard" way by day 10. So we saved 10 days of "grind" to get the same thing. So wasn't like it made or breaked the game.
So that is the reason you see it being mentioned as future. With a well thought out item mall. you can almost get 25% more income, while expanding your player base, which keeps your game alive longer.