I was just thinking about some of the more expensive CD games for the TG16. These games are very expensive because they are hard to find. The question I have is why?
I have to imagine that the cost of programming a game, designing the packaging, marketing, etc. was quite expensive. With that high cost, why only press a few thousand games? Some estimates are as low as 1,500 to 3,000 copies.
It seems that the cost to press a few hundred games in 2013 is about $500. Was the cost of pressing CDs in the 90s much higher? I thought that the transition from cartridge to CD was prompted by two things, more storage and cheaper medium.
If there were a hundreds of thousands of systems sold in the U.S., why not just press 20,000 CDs and spend the extra few thousands of dollars? If the company already had many thousands of dollars committed to the game, what is a few grand more?
Am I missing something here? Were CDs very expensive to press in the 90s?