That's because it is complicated. The ASIC chips are over priced and have to be made or aquired in bulk that means you need a lot of cash upfront hence the group buys.

A whole bunch of ASIC vendors have sprung up essentially with no money for R&D so they get crowd funded with pre-orders that have to wait for months. Most other industries don't work like this. I don't think it's a good thing, because normally to get venture capital you need to present a strong management team and business plan. The pre-order caper bypasses this quality assurance, as we have already seen, you end up with many dodgy ASIC vendors.