>My understanding was that independent game authors were writing games and making cartridges for these games which they then sold.
In most the cases I'm familiar with, the official release is only a patch file. You have to patch the original game with the patch file yourself. Often a third party will patch the file and host it themselves, making only add revenue. In some cases, a fourth party will take the patched file (either creating their own or taking one from the third party), and put it in a cartridge which they then sell of a significant sum of money (compared to the third party who is only getting the add revenue from you using their site).
In general, the people actually making the patch aren't making any money off it because of the increased risk of being shut down by whomever holds the original IP.
>Is the market large enough to support that much effort and expense?
I think the market for custom cartridges is mostly driven by people who buy cartridges and load their own roms onto it for their own use. Only a few do the extra work of trying to load roms and sale them.
Then again, certain games can go for $50 or more on ebay for a used cartridge. If you can fake the cartridge good enough, you might be able to make decent money selling these.
>it'd seem easier to spot this (from the IP owner's perspective) and seek preventative legal responses.
It's probably hard to track down because of the independent nature of those doing it. It's like the $50-$100 dollar craigslist ads for people offering to mod your SNES classic and add a bunch of roms to it (once you have everything set up, it is less than 15 minutes, and $50 tax free dollars is pretty good income for them amount of time).
>but do you know if they sell blank cartridges that can just be loaded with games?
That's my understanding of how most of this works, but that may be wrong. I personally don't do cartridges since my old systems are more finicky than using an emulator.
>I am guessing, hopefully, that you know more about this stuff than I do.
I only deal in the software side and don't do anything to make money. I'll help friends set up emulators on their PC, or help them with a retro-pi/SNES classic mods, but always for free. The extent of my knowledge of the hardware cartridges is based on posts by the rom hack creators disavowing any relationship with the hard copies. Though as another poster pointed out, I have seen a few people attempting to release hardware copies of new games. Mostly I just deal with unofficial English translations of JRPGs.
In most the cases I'm familiar with, the official release is only a patch file. You have to patch the original game with the patch file yourself. Often a third party will patch the file and host it themselves, making only add revenue. In some cases, a fourth party will take the patched file (either creating their own or taking one from the third party), and put it in a cartridge which they then sell of a significant sum of money (compared to the third party who is only getting the add revenue from you using their site).
In general, the people actually making the patch aren't making any money off it because of the increased risk of being shut down by whomever holds the original IP.
>Is the market large enough to support that much effort and expense?
I think the market for custom cartridges is mostly driven by people who buy cartridges and load their own roms onto it for their own use. Only a few do the extra work of trying to load roms and sale them.
Then again, certain games can go for $50 or more on ebay for a used cartridge. If you can fake the cartridge good enough, you might be able to make decent money selling these.
>it'd seem easier to spot this (from the IP owner's perspective) and seek preventative legal responses.
It's probably hard to track down because of the independent nature of those doing it. It's like the $50-$100 dollar craigslist ads for people offering to mod your SNES classic and add a bunch of roms to it (once you have everything set up, it is less than 15 minutes, and $50 tax free dollars is pretty good income for them amount of time).
>but do you know if they sell blank cartridges that can just be loaded with games?
That's my understanding of how most of this works, but that may be wrong. I personally don't do cartridges since my old systems are more finicky than using an emulator.
>I am guessing, hopefully, that you know more about this stuff than I do.
I only deal in the software side and don't do anything to make money. I'll help friends set up emulators on their PC, or help them with a retro-pi/SNES classic mods, but always for free. The extent of my knowledge of the hardware cartridges is based on posts by the rom hack creators disavowing any relationship with the hard copies. Though as another poster pointed out, I have seen a few people attempting to release hardware copies of new games. Mostly I just deal with unofficial English translations of JRPGs.