This is a traditional devkit, not some startup offering people development models. They DON'T want normal consumers to have one of these. If they did, they would get the wrong impression on how the consumer version would work and that would develop bad press for them. They don't trust normal consumers, and they shouldn't. The price not only helps them pay for the kits, which are undoubtedly this expensive to manufacture since they are being produced in small batches, but to also keep it out of the hands of people who do not intend to develop on it, and thus not get a ton of people buying it and misusing the dev kit and then creating bad press on it. I'd charge more honestly, because AR is something I want hardcore, and I really don't want some bad hype ruining it coming out en masse sooner rather than later. The main designer of this system at Microsoft has said outright, they don't have something that would appeal to normal consumers yet, and so they don't want to release to them. Once they have something they believe might work, I'm sure they'll release it and do so at a price point that is reasonable for normal consumers(because it wouldn't be viable if it wasn't affordable/comfortable to use)