[elkayps2]

Eveyone knows the messiah chip is the best, but why?

Because it allows direct booting of all backup psx, ps2 cd-r and ps2 dvd-r , with no swaps or bootdisks.

Thats all great but why is it so expensive?

You need to know that there are actually 2 different types of PS2 in existance,

The first is the retail version thats avalable to the general public, I dont know how musc they are in us Dollars but here in australia they are $499.00 rrp

the second is a "Developer Console" this type is used buy the guys who write the games. now new games take alot of effort and have to be tested fully to make sure all the bugs are worked out before the game hits "Full Release" at any stage during the games creation these guys want to be able to burn what theve done down to a cd-r or dvd-r disk and try it out. The "Developers Console is written with a different version of the bios that allows them to boot their "in development" games and play/test them.
these consoles cost $2000.00 here in australia and are only avalable to software development companys.

The messiah chip is a very nice upgrade that you can add to your Retail console and it will give you the functionality of the "Developer Console"
the full Original Messiah costs here in australia around the $500.00 to have installed

Thats where the $$$$ are if you think about it a retail PS2 with messiah is actually an very cheap alternative to a Dev console.

retail ps2 $500.00
messiah $500.00
thats------$1000.00 (obviously)

still half the price of the dev

hope this helps