deal of ROM space; as much as, or even more than, the game itself. At the time, these larger ROMs were much more expensive to produce, and so the Intellivoice-supporting titles ended up retailing for much more than a standard Intellivision game; while standard non-voice titles typically debuted at $39.95, then quickly dropped to around $20 – $25 as new titles were released, Intellivoice titles retailed for as much as $45 apiece and were much slower to drop in price. The Intellivoice itself was a costly add-on, debuting at around $100, and rarely selling for less than $80. Though the Intellivoice package was bundled with a game (B-17 Bomber), this was considered a high initial investment. Due to the limits on the amount of ROM space that could be put inside a cartridge, words had to be digitized at the lowest possible sampling rate at which they could still be understood, and it wasn't unusual for the sampling rate to be changed three or four times within the same word (lower rates for vowels, higher for consonants) to save space. This tended to give the voice a distinctly mechanical, unnatural sound. No third-party games supported the Intellivoice. This was partly due to the difficulty of producing voice data for the Orator chip (since the data consisted of strings of analog-filter coefficients to modify the behavior of the chip's synthetic vocal-tract model, rather than simple digitized samples, the process was somewhat complex and required considerable support from G.I.), and partly due to the lack of information on how the Intellivoice module worked since Mattel, like most other game-console manufacturers of the day, did not want third parties to be able to compete with them by producing games for their systems. In August 1983 all personnel related to Intellivoice game and hardware development were laid off, and development on all further Intellivoice games was halted except for two: Space Shuttle, and World Series Major League Baseball. Space Shuttle, a NASA space mission simulator, continued development for a time, but was eventually cancelled for being "too much simulation and not enough game". World Series Major League Baseball, however, was completed as part of the initial round of games produced for the Entertainment Computer System add-on module, making it the final game produced with Intellivoice support. Unlike the other four Intellivoice games, WSMLB didn't actually require the use of the Intellivoice in order to