laxu
Fractal Fanatic
In Europe the FM3 + FC6 is actually more expensive than a Kemper Stage, Helix Floor or Quad Cortex by 266 euros (using Thomann pricing with Finnish VAT of 24%). The FC6 at 599 euros is just way too expensive when Line6 Helix Control (equivalent of the FC12) is almost half the price.The FM3 with an FC-6 is in the cost territory of the Helix Floor, the Kemper Stage, and the upcoming Quad Cortex.
Fractal, being a smaller company, definitely doesn't have the financial resources of a Line6 (Yamaha) to turn out multiple form factors of their flagship product. Look what they've cranked out: The Helix Floor, LT, Stomp, Stomp XL AND the POD Go.
I'm kinda curious what happens with the QC, with a Profiler and a modeler in one unit. Unless they are about 100% equally good, one is bound to lose support. My bet is that the Profiling wins out, because their modeling is no where close to FRACTAL in terms of tweakability.
Line6 was able to make all the other units after they put in the time to make a unified firmware that works with small modifications on all of their devices so they can update all of them in tandem, leading to far less development cost. Stomp is basically half a Helix when it comes to its DSP and I am not sure what the POD Go uses but I would expect a fairly compatible DSP. Fractal has two different DSPs to work with so I would expect their development costs for each are larger but considering how fast some of the Axe-Fx 3 features got ported to the FM3 it seems to be an easier process than Axe-Fx 2 vs AX8.
I think you overstate people's love for the Fractal level of tweakability. Most don't use the advanced features and probably like the idea of having them more than actually using them. I went with tube amps and Helix for a few years and don't miss the extra tweakability at all. There are other features that are cool but the amp block advanced tweaks are not that important. Now that I have a FM3 I still don't see the power supply etc pages becoming a regular part of dialing in a tone.
QC will have more profiles no matter what simply because 3rd parties can make them. I do hope NeuralDSP puts in the effort to keep adding amp models but at the same time I don't care if there's anywhere near as many as Fractal. I'd rather have less but unique amp models rather than a million Marshall variants and users crying for more "just so you have it". One of the cool things about the QC is that the profiling can be used to fill in the gaps and satisfy the people asking for more. For example Fryette amps are underrepresented on pretty much everything and even Fractal has just the Deliverance. Well, on QC someone can just do profiles of the others and while you lose some control you still get to use that amp.