I don't think so. The 7D has traditionally been priced well below the 5D and much closer to the 6D. An R that is priced between the 5D and the 1Dx would make it at least twice the cost of a 7D. That's not a price point that will appeal to 7D users. Plus, unless it has fairly high resolution, it won't fill the niche that a 7D does, which is largely driven by the perceived reach advantages of the 1.6 crop factor.
If it's end of the road for the 7D line, we can throw out all logical assumptions based upon past price points and features, your post is based upon those. I think Canon will position a fast sports/birding body in a new slot, below the 1DX and in the R line but at what tier is anyone's guess. Crop may possibly be limited to the XXD at it's highest point from now on.
I see your point. I read your post as implying that a new sports/birding R body would fill the market niche of the 7D. It can't hit that price point, but it could certainly hit the use needs/wants of that niche. I admit, I'm having a bit of a hard time letting go of the 7D series. But, I'm not privy to Canon's market research and they may have determined that the customers they will lose by dumping the 7D line will be offset by the gains they will make offering a upscaled 80D at a price point below that of the 7D.
Objective facts are that the resolution of the sensor is well behind the best opposition - see https://www.optyczne.pl/293.4-Test_aparatu-Canon_EOS_7D_Mark_II_Rozdzielczość.html for quantitative measurements - it was behind the opposition when it was introduced 5 years ago. That doesn't mean you can't get sharp images from it, you certainly can, but you have to get more pixels on the image to equal the resolution of the better sensors.
I can barely afford it. Thus the trepidation. News/Editorial staff have been cut and freelancing takes a while to build up to. I like the Canon glass lineup and the performance/value ratio, just not their bodies (love the UI though, muscle memory at it's best). I also don't want to use their adapter on R bodies and would rather use a native lens. I've concurrently used the 5dmk4 at various events but for outdoor sports, which I'm covering more of, I reach for the 7dmkII.
Are we approaching a point where consumers no longer put much faith in the "perceived reach advantages of the 1.6 crop factor," thanks to education and experience?
The great thing is that you can have whatever feelings you want. For example, there are some people that feel the earth is flat.
Sorry, but the facts contradict your statement:
While it's true that firmware updates can't add hardware, there is not necessarily a hardware change needed to support f/8 AF with an f/5.6 AF point. Going the other way, i.e. increasing the baseline of the AF point ('adding an f/2.8 AF point') is not possible. But AF with a narrower max aperture is really dependent on the sampling density of the AF point, which is typically higher than it needs to be for a given AF point threshold.
