I'd feel like I was missing out on something. My take is that it's simply a hair over engineered for the level of expressiveness most musicians will be able to play with. Build the same thing at a lower fidelity, sell it at 1/4 the price and maybe it'll take off. Right now, it's the price of really high end traditional instruments. And the next step down is a 10 penny whistle.
In the mass production industry, the first users traditionally pay off R&D at a high price, and then you reduce and sell to everyone else once costs are recovered.