I've always wondered why they can't just use custom ASICs for these. The common response to this question is that these mini consoles don't sell enough for the economy of scale to work out for designing and shipping custom silicon, but is that the full story? There were officially-licensed system-on-chip Mega Drive clones sold up until 2011, at cheap bargain-bin prices. Modern day mini consoles are priced like collectables and still sell hundreds of thousands, or even millions of units. Is that really not enough? Why could the Mega Drive clones do it?