Agree with every point made with the exception of affordable professional CD production disappearing, at least in the immediate future or time being. Maybe from a local level but I’ve never even considered local being a possibility. If anyone is looking for help to publish pressed CDs with professional packaging, you’re welcome to send me a message.
I’ve got multiple projects that would make far more sense to release on a CD than cart but the chances of it being a successful release due to the limiting factors you outlined push me away from bothering. Less about money and more about reach.
At one point I said “never again” on another Jaguar CD release but, I tend to stand behind the ‘never say never’ mentality because really, you never know. There’s always going to be the handful of hardcore purists and collectors who just want the full, real-deal experience of using actual hardware., which I can fully appreciate.
With the way things are going for the JagGD though, I can’t imagine it being much longer before every single CD game is running on the cart by the end of the year including VLM. There’s only a handful of CD games that currently don’t work but it looks like Saint is making progress on that as of recent. Add on the upcoming possibilities with JagStudio using the GD as a massive bank switching cart and file loading system that will be far more reliable than the JagCD is, and it’s a done deal. I’m currently doing things I never imagined the Jaguar would be possible doing.. so, call me a believer and convinced.
At this point, I view the JagCD as an overvalued liability and is why I sold mine a while back. Part of me still wants one but the non-collector part of me moved on.