I have posted this several times but I'll say it again. According to an interview I saw, woz was being sold at $6500 at introduction At A LOSS! This is a technique used sometimes in real estate to prime the pump and get customers and a reputation. I believe some game platforms have been sold at cost or less because they will make it up selling games.
JJP needs to actually make a profit.
They are in the business of building high end games and their stated goal is to build the best games possible, not sell games that are reasonably priced. It's obvious they keep pushing the state of the art and so their prices may continue to rise.
This complaint about pricing comes up frequently in my other hobby, high end audio. While there are many products there that make a JJP game look like pocket change by comparison, there are also many good values and lots of trickle down technology from the extremely expensive gear.
But one thing is that I've noticed in audio is that the pricing arguments become tiresome. There's systems from a thousand dollars to a million. It's just about finding the products that are in your price range, making wise choices and often (in audio) buying used. (Often at about half of retail). Pinball is the only consumer electronic I've ever seen that holds it value so well (which has its positive and negative aspects).