With regard to the Republic Commando port, I don't see this the same way at all (although bonus points for the THEY LIVE reference). I see this as living proof that older, pre-Mouse Star Wars is what sells, and what people care about.
Well, the other side of this is that Disney/LFL want to milk the brand anyway they can, and with the laughable speed it takes for them to produce video games of their own, it's easier to just fill the void with pre-existing games.
Just goes to show how far we've come in terms of Star Wars games. In 2005 alone, we had the ROTS game,
LEGO Star Wars for the kiddies,
Republic Commando, Battlefront II, and the PC port of KOTOR II.
Nowadays, it takes EA and Lucasfilm three to four years just to churn out something as mediocre as
Squadrons or
Fallen Order.
Case in point, look at Hasbro. They don't want to produce further ST figures, because they don't sell. Disney may, contractually, make them do it of course, but they've famously stated that they are a waste of time and bad for business.
I believe Diamond Select were the ones who made the statement about the ST Figures selling like AIDS needles, not Hasbro. But Hasbro themselves has demonstrated many times that they're aware of where the hype and interest is for their collector's market.
It's no coinicidence that Boba Fett has been repackaged and resold in various Archives Sets for their Black Series Line, while most of the ST Characters haven't had a revision or repackaging since 2018. Most of the new figure announcements are almost always PT or OT releases or re-releases, or limited runs of
Blandalorian or TCW fodder like Ahsoka and Cad Bane. And on top of that, they've started farming old Star Wars games for their GameStop Exclusive figures.
Back in 2018, the GameStop Exclusive was Snoke on his Fisher Price Throne. These days? It's Darth Nihlus, or the various specialist Stormtroopers from
The Force Unleashed.
Secondary market EU material has increased in price, also.
Some of it has, some of it hasn't. I only bring this up because I shop around for EU materials on the regular to expand my
dong collection, and the old paperback and hardcover books have remained at the same relatively cheap price for years (I say relatively because certain hardcovers like
Darth Plagueis and the Bane Trilogy are sought after and pricey). Really, the EU material that has quadrupled in price are the Dark Horse comics. Now, that could be because Marvel is doing such a shit job keeping their "Legends Epic Collections" in stock for normies, but it's not just the Dark Horse omnibus volumes that have climbed up in price;
Shadows of the Empire, Dawn of the Jedi, and
Tales of the Jedi command some steep prices online, either for nostalgia or Disney/LFL by and large not economizing on those eras in canon.
I also personally remember seeing the
Dark Empire TPB's going for stupid amounts of money back in December of 2019....completely coincidental, I'm sure.