Thanks for sharing your perspective, Robot Heart! Makes a lot of sense to me. And I hope it's obvious that I'm saying that even though I would of course like to see yet another portable power tool by DSI again. But I absolutely get the reasoning behind your/the company's decision and that it is one that has been made out of necessity rather than on principle (as in: we just don't like desktop modules anymore).
@Paul Dither: Very interesting analysis. What I see a lot in this discussion is focus on limitations: small market, too expensive compared to competition, specialist tool - and so on. How about looking at the possibilities by having a standard small module front panel, use the flagship machines as technology development platforms and occasionally sell smaller slices of different combinations of the flagship machinery to people with smaller budgets who are interested in great sounding and expressive machines with a wide sonic span?
Basically, ever since the release of the Prophet '08, all of your suggestions have been put into practice. Those kinds of instruments were the Mopho variations and the Tetra. In the case of the Evolver it was the other way around, but I assume only because Dave was all on his own in the beginning and wanted to await the response first. If he had come out with the Poly Evolver in the first place, that would have been a much riskier move. Anyway, at least up until early 2013 - i.e. when the Prophet 12 was introduced - DSI indeed offered products for potentially every customer based on the derivative development strategy you described above. There was the Evolver family and then there were all the analog instruments based on the Prophet '08 engine with a couple of variations included.
My point is just that by 2013, DSI was 11 years old and the market had already significantly changed by then. It may not have happened overnight, but at around that time the resurgance of all things analog was already going strong, and lots of customers were craving for all those new portable and affordable analog synths. By now, this market segment (marking the price range from $150 to $600) is flooded with recreations, new devices, and emulations. Whether it's a good or bad thing, what had been most succesful in the past few years were relatively simple devices, everything that satisfied the nostalgia and retro appetite, everything that provided instant gratification without too much synth expertise, and so on. In short: fun boxes that are easy to operate and do still sound like "the real (analog) thing" that a significant number of people waited for or wanted to discover from a newbie perspective. Now, if you take a look at this presumed recipe for success, it doesn't quite represent what is usually associated with DSI products, which is why we like them because their products have always been somewhat more sophisticated. So in terms of company philosophy, it wouldn't make sense to serve that very same market. But even if they would try to be in it only for the money, they couldn't cash in as much as the competition, simply because of a lack of resources and higher production costs.
But we'd be more interested in anything that goes beyond the sheer analog revival craze anyway. Okay, but that already entails a shrunken prospective target audience - at least if one assumes that there are more people out there willing to pay for a TR-8 or a Volca synth; and just from observing various forums and discussions, I think there are plenty of hints out there that point in that direction. So, the first risky outcome of designing a more sophisticated device that doesn't necessarily focus on mainstream wishes would be a smaller potential customer base. Combine that with the lack of uber-competitive production resources (think Roland, Korg, or now Behringer), which results in not being able to undercut any of the given budget prices anymore, and you potentially end up in a lose-lose scenario.
There's only one way this could work out well: if the single ambitious affordable device appears to be a total game changer and everybody happens to recognize that immediately. But such instant success based on more than just innovation by pricing, but innovation by design, is not only hardly to predict, but also very unlikely, as one should never underestimate a certain conservatism when it comes to synth evergreens. And so it ends up not making much sense in the first place to invest time and money into the development of and research for such an exclusive project - an ambitious and relatively affordable synth that may not sell as it should (by the rules of the budget market segment).