I've seen the kits, some are thousands of dollars, some hundreds. This is not so bad, USB is more sophisicated and you get more for your efforts. It's not Ethernet but Ethernet is more demanding. I should point out that USB datarates are likely to be under a megabit a second, and that shared. Of course, TASS is not about writing programs that sell, but dedicated programs that do specific jobs.
People still ride and rise horses.