As a genre, why are shmups often so expensive?

[Tanooki | 4,929]

Well at least you won't need a kidney donation on the black market for arcade card based NEC shooter Sapphire much longer as come March it's included in their mini HDMI console along with a few others that have crept up into the annoying levels too.

[peg | 370]

You think console shmups prices are bad try getting into the PCB scene, especially stuff like Cave where the "cheapest" board is like $500-600 for a bare PCB.  And that's for the cheap common shit like Espgaluda which tanked in price due to conversions flooding the market.  The expensive games run thousands of dollars, with a damn game like DoDonPachi SaiDaiOuJou which came out as recently as 2012 and is somehow $5500.

[Rooster | 124]

11 hours ago, Sumez said:

Yamatoku occasionally puts up Gun-Nac carts at a stupidly cheap price level, misspelled in some way that makes them not show up on searches. It often pays off to go through their stock.

  

Nevermind the fact that those two consoles have some of the best shooter libraries out there? Assuming that games like Blast Wind, Battle Garegga, or Hyper Duel are expensive "because their english speaking ass can play them" is a pretty gross misappropriation of what those games really are.

However whenever any genuinely great game is an import exclusive, they almost always get super expensive. We see the same tendency for games like Gimmick, Majyuuou, Chrono Trigger, Terranigma, or Ninja Gaiden 3, etc. The list of examples is endless.

This is true but his auctions have been getting bid up a lot more lately.  Its getting harder for me to find good deals from him these days.