2 hours ago, MarkV said:
The reality is your bringing out a system 40 years after the cpu inside it was cutting edge, and this will be a system that will have possibly a few thousand owners, why dilute that pool by having different levels of system ability, that is X8 vs X16 this makes no sense to me.
I think the harsh reality of economics are at play. Supply issues and cost increases related to chip fab constraints aren't going away anytime soon, which along with the logistics, practical and cost overheads of buying/storing/shipping the intial X16p mean the likely price of the kit is rocketing, which will weaken sales overall (and the device needs some economies of scale to break even).
My guess is that without the safe, low risk income from sales of the X8 the X16 might never become a reality - (certainly not the surface mounted or embedded versions need to reach a price point and critical mass of sales). There is a very, very niche market for a totally DIY solder it yourself product costing $500+ (once the bundled custom keyboard, cost of a case and PSU, shipping and taxes etc are taken into account). Even less for one if you need to spend another $150+ to have it hand assembled for you.
Releasing the X8 would incur almost zero financial risk (its already developed, works, and the parts aren't nearly as constrained as the X16 BOM, it can be produced locally etc), could likely be sold for comfortably sub $100 (including a load of margin to pump in to the big boy X16 development and de-risk the jump to a surface mounted version), would demonstrate that the X16 line-up isn't vaporware (in terms of a physical product seeing release), and would get a near identical (if constrained) version of the VERA platform out there in v1.0 form to encourage developer and tutorial writer efforts.
And that's before considering that the X8 (with its constraints) might be a device a lot of people might actually want.