Why are Switch modchips so expensive?

[hotchocolate5432]

Are they expensive to produce or did Team Xecuter and now HWFLY hold a monopoly on the modchip market and charge whatever customers are willing to pay?

 

[CeeDee]

The ones I'm seeing are around the ~$100 USD mark, which... yeah, I guess that's the price you pay for the ability to mod a Lite/OLED. I guess you'll save that money on the games you won't have to buy afterwards?
It's an option with a more limited audience, honestly with the effort hardmodding probably takes, you might be better with just snagging a low-serial original Switch.

 

[Badablek]

@hotchocolate5432 R&D have a cost (a lot)...making a modchip is not just like buying some components, put it randomly on a board, shake it and voilà !
the cost of the modchip is not ONLY the components, but everything "behind", not visible (hardware/software).

if a 100$ modchip is too high for you, it's obvious you are not old enough for the PS2 era for example....with a 30 wires modchip at much higher price than an HWFly ! And much harder to install !

HWFly = ~2 full price AAA games
price is fair enough when we know what this modchip will be used to ! No ?

 

[Purple_Shyguy]

The potential of getting raided by the FBI and sued for millions of dollars and going to jail for years probably slapped a couple bucks onto the RRP

 

[kisamesama]

where are they sold? aliexpress?
How difficult are they to install? need soldering?

 

[hippy dave]

Are they expensive to produce or did Team Xecuter and now HWFLY hold a monopoly on the modchip market and charge whatever customers are willing to pay?

The latter.

 

[dragonmaster]

well i cant solder very well hell i can only solder arcade controllers anything below this size gonna get messy and where i live there are no people willing to solder in a reasonable price therefore i ve got my v1 switch and was done with the modchips

 

[wurstpistole]

where are they sold? aliexpress?
How difficult are they to install? need soldering?

don't know
pretty difficult, needs soldering on tiny spaces

@hotchocolate5432 R&D have a cost (a lot)...making a modchip is not just like buying some components, put it randomly on a board, shake it and voilà !
the cost of the modchip is not ONLY the components, but everything "behind", not visible (hardware/software).

if a 100$ modchip is too high for you, it's obvious you are not old enough for the PS2 era for example....with a 30 wires modchip at much higher price than an HWFly ! And much harder to install !

HWFly = ~2 full price AAA games
price is fair enough when we know what this modchip will be used to ! No ?

I had the original MATRIX Modchip in my PS2... cost around 150€ including installation IIRC.

 

[de9ed]

Research and development + Risk and Reward

 

[Hayato213]

Are they expensive to produce or did Team Xecuter and now HWFLY hold a monopoly on the modchip market and charge whatever customers are willing to pay?

Used to cost around $170 when it first came out, if you find that expensive then get an unpatched unit and a trinket m0

 

[masagrator]

@hotchocolate5432 R&D have a cost (a lot)...making a modchip is not just like buying some components, put it randomly on a board, shake it and voilà !
the cost of the modchip is not ONLY the components, but everything "behind", not visible (hardware/software).

if a 100$ modchip is too high for you, it's obvious you are not old enough for the PS2 era for example....with a 30 wires modchip at much higher price than an HWFly ! And much harder to install !

HWFly = ~2 full price AAA games
price is fair enough when we know what this modchip will be used to ! No ?

Research and development + Risk and Reward

R&D was already done by TX + balika011 and TX was taking less for modchip. HWFly is just reusing their work.
HWFly inflated price in comparison to SX Modchips because demand exists even for such high price. If demand gets lowered, they are lowering price to boost up demand.
Free market.

 

[CompSciOrBust]

Xecuter were barely making a profit on their chips to discourage clones, HWFly on the other hand are greedy bastards charging double the price of the original SX chips even though they didn't have to pay for R&D. The only people who can work on them are in China since westerners will get slapped by the police. I know someone who had plans to release a completely open source solution (firmware, FPGA code, gerbers) but decided not to at the last minute because of legal issues.

Edit: According to a Taobao seller more Chinese clones are coming soon so maybe that will drive the price down, I don't know if that's true though.

 

[impeeza]

Are they expensive to produce or did Team Xecuter and now HWFLY hold a monopoly on the modchip market and charge whatever customers are willing to pay?

Monopoly, they have a "secret" on his FPGA no body has copied so the only ones with the secret can charge any they want, the prices some day goes to high as 200 USD...

 

[lolcatzuru]

Are they expensive to produce or did Team Xecuter and now HWFLY hold a monopoly on the modchip market and charge whatever customers are willing to pay?

mostly because they know you will pay whatever they ask, similarly, alot of places dont sell them because modchips are kind of no no in most places as most places tend to kneel to major corporation's

 

[randy_w]

Afaik there's only one seller on taobao and everyone else (including those shops on aliexpress) are just dropshipping. So yeah that one shop on taobao controls the whole market, of course they can charge whatever they want.

Btw when PS3 Cobra ODE first came out it costs like $100, Gateway 3DS costs about $90 iirc. Both price dropped when clones or similar products appeared on the market (stone ode, matrix ode, e3 ode and for 3ds, sky3ds, ace3ds and mt). If you don't feel like paying $100 for the modchip, probably wait a bit longer and I'm sure clones would appear on the market.

Also price of hwfly oled v4 chip dropped a bit several weeks ago, now selling for 500 CNY (about $75) on taobao. If you buy multiple chips you can probably save some money by purchasing directly on taobao.