What has to be understood is that this thread demonstrates the bleeding edge of FPGA mining. Sure, 95% percent who are interested will not even try the hardware mod.

But what will happen when FPGA cards come out of the box, will mods needed for mining? And at a price point of $2500-$3000? GPU mining will be effectively dead for non-ETH scenarios.

The unknown aspect is how FPGA are able to adapt to potential resistance from coins/Devs who will fork. The Phi/Lux will be probably be the first case.