Eating Saturn Owner's Money

ShowBob
showbob@geocities.com

Have you noticed the price of parts and accessories to the Saturn these days? You know that someone isn't thinking correctly when the price of an accessory to a game is more expensive than the game itself. The retail price of Virtua Fighter 2 is $40, yet the controller specifically made for fighting games, especially Virtua Fighter, "The Virtua Stick" sells for $60. Another that is really bad is the "Arcade Racer". I thought it was a great idea when Sega came out with an advanced steering wheel for their racing games. There are a lot of racing games out for the Saturn, and the most expensive one is Daytona GT, the sequel to Daytona USA. It sells for at most $60. Yet the "Arcade Racer" sells for a whopping $80. There are two of the overpriced accessories that effect me, and that is the Backup RAM cartridge and the controller. The controller isn't that expensive, compared to the others. I saw it going for close to $40. The Backup RAM is another thing, however, costing $60. I looked into this one a great deal, since it is something that I desperately want, so I checked out the prices for the other systems. The Playstation memory cartridge costs $15 and holds just a little less than the Saturn cartridge. The Nintendo64 memory cartridge costs the same as the Playstation cartridge, and holds about 3 times as much stuff as the same priced PSX cartridge and the rip-off $60 Saturn cartridge.

The worst part about all of this is that the company (in this case a small division of Sega) can charge this much, and even more if they wanted, and they would still get a lot of buyers, because they are things that people need. Sega has lowered their prices on everything but the accessories (Systems, games, etc.), and I hope that they realize how ridiculous their prices are someday soon.