Really all you have to do is look at the physical features of it and watch a video or two about how it functions.

Say you start with the fader bucket as a base. Cut the cost in half? Typically moving parts are expensive because they wear out so they need to be high quality which in turn costs more money. So the obvious way to cut costs here is to give the user half the amount of faders. So, 8 faders for $7k? Do you think anyone will be on board with that? I really don't think so.

So what else can we do? We can't cut out the encoders, because we probably don't save that much and we want at least a couple per channel. Well, actually let's say we cut it down to just one encoder per channel instead. We saved a tiny amount now.



How about the buttons? Well, I don't think we're anywhere near $7k worth of buttons. Plus, the fader unit doesn't have that many buttons.

Maybe frame and build-quality. Probably just the frame, because for $7k we want good build quality. We're still probably nowhere near half price.

And that leaves software. In other words cripple the software to create "artificial" tiers in the product lineup. But if you do that then prospective buyers are going to cry about it.

-------

My take on it? Yamaha has no way of creating an appealing product at $7k that is competitive in the market without cannibalizing sales of Nuage. Because of this I really think the smartest thing to do if they want to change things is to cut the price of Nuage in half. Then people would get closer to what they want. But that's a big step, and of course we don't even know what the production costs are of this device. It could be that if sales then pick up it's simply still too pricey to be worth gambling on building more of them. Perhaps a simpler frame would do the trick, but I doubt it.