Keep in mind, that we are paying well over $2000 for this unit, not a few hundred like some other modellers that get one update every year..
That being said, if we never got anymore updates I would still consider this a GREAT purchase.
The thing is: professional software developement costs a SHITTON of money nowadays. Being and engineer, I work with several CAD and FEM systems at work. The average private user couldn't afford just one single professional licence of catia or Ansys for home use. That's why usually companies don't really care about private piracy of professional software (they do care for private consumer software like games).
Also, even semi-professional software (keep in mind: pressing a DVD costs a company less than a dollar) like Photoshop costs several hundred bucks.
Of course, $2000 doesn't seem fair if we only take the cost for parts and manufacturing into account. But this makes just a small fraction of the cost of digital equipment.
Other modellers are much cheaper for five main reasons:
1) there's usually a giant company involved, like BOSS or LINE-6, which allows allocating company internal resources at a much lower price than it would be with external resources (electricians, engineers - I can't imagine Fractal having their own engineer for designing all the mechatronical peripherals of the AXE - they have probably just contracted a freelance engineer or a company for that task) - this also greatly reduces the cost for actual manufacturing (even if it makes only a small fraction of the product cost), as those companies usually have their own manufacturing logistics.
2) giant companies now and then tend to put low priced products on the market with a much lower profit margin, to boost competition.
3) made in cambodia/korea/china/whatever (though china gets more and more expensive every year, due to politics and increasing taxes).
4) advertisement. Don't underestimate the cost of advertisement of any form. There's almost no need for BOSS or LINE-6 to do advertisement on their lower priced modellers - simply because everyone knows and uses them.
5) usage of standards and licenced algorithms. Lower priced modellers usually use existing software modules and algorithms, which saves a lot of money for the actual software developement. This, however, also reduces their flexibility and there's almost no innovation going on (remember Cliff writing that MIMIC algorythm and being able to actually put that in the Axe via a firmware update? Impossible with licenced module based software and without the required software peripherals)
