Many people doubted strongly that an ASIC would come along at all, due to supposedly HUGE startup costs.

If the claims about how prohibitive the initial research/development costs would be are valid, surely it would seem incongruous to have the first few units produced be dirt cheap. Quite the contrary, surely it is to be expected that the first production units would be sold to a select clientele at a premium price? If the price of these first few units were in the "reasonable" price ranges you folk would like to see them at doubtless that would have been taken as further proof it must be a scam, due to the evident failure to attempt to recoup some of the "prohibitive" development costs...

-MarkM-