he’s sure ppl will be like “what about Saturn \/ Dreamcast Mini?” [and] it’s not like they [Sega] didn’t explore the idea \u2014 the MD Mini’s internals can’t adequately handle Saturn games, and both developing and manufacturing new chipsets during the pandemic is a difficult & expensive process<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n… so, even if they’d forged ahead with a Saturn Mini anyway, it might’ve been extremely expensive \u2014 he jokes that he might like to release a mini that costs as much as an authentic modern console<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
And that’s when the Mega Drive Mini 2 came into the picture, as an “extension” of the original one – making it a lot more manageable during a pandemic, in terms of the schedule and manufacturing. It’s worth noting there will still be a “much lower production run” of this device – with the initial focus on stocking Japan. Okunari is aware of the demand overseas but remains focused on Japan for now, where the team knows the market.<\/p>\n
Although the price of the second Mega Drive Mini system is higher – due to an improved chipset, more memory to fit Mega CD games, and the increased price of components, Okunari is confident the larger library of games will justify the price.<\/p>\n
Okunari also mentioned how the team considered making another Game Gear Micro, but the increased price of semiconductors made costs of a second handheld micro-unit “1.5x the manufacturing price” of the original micro model. And the team supposedly couldn’t risk selling at the same price and didn’t want to increase the RRP.<\/p>\n