Before the moderators (hopefully) move the "I want a stills-only camera" horse-flogging comments to their own thread...
Here's a thought to consider that seems to have been missed in the melee: Canon doesn't develop technology for a specific body. Canon develops technology with market needs in mind, with an overall objective of advancing what is possible. Pricing, positioning, differentiation -- all of that becomes relevant when choosing what features go into which bodies and for which target market.
Example: Dual Pixel Auto Focus wasn't developed "for" the EOS 70D. It was developed as a new technology and
introduced in the 70D (incidentally, the 70D pleasantly surprised everyone by launching at least $100 lower than most were predicting).
Point: Canon has been developing the Digic X architecture to fulfill a variety of needs, not least among those being data throughput. This opens the door for many features (for both stills and video), regardless of which body(ies) it goes into. The return on that investment of R&D is not being generated only by a single body or the specific bodies that utilize it to its maximum potential. The rising technology tide lifts all models, and the prices of those models combine to provide a return on that collective R&D investment while also positioning specific bodies and feature sets for different segments of the market.
In other words: The price of a stills-only camera will not be lower simply because its feature set doesn't include all the capability that available technology offers. Yes, removing the inexpensive video-centric parts might make it difficult to hack a stills-only camera to use for video, but it won't have any effect on the price because that price (and feature set) is about positioning that particular body to a particular market segment
while also distributing general R&D costs across product lines.
It sounds like picPerfect would like a camera with:
- Moderate sensor resolution
- High-end sensor design (DR, ISO, etc)
- Moderate throughput (FPS) using lower-end processing architecture*
- 5D-like ergonomics and menu
- Lower Price
Can Canon do that? Sure!
Is it wrong to want this? No!
Does Canon's market research indicate that selling a camera with such a price and feature set will contribute well to net profit? Not so far.
Could that ever change? Sure! If it ever does, we'll see that body! All the reasons why Canon doesn't are just speculation and probably not worth arguing about.
Ultimately, it appears Canon has chosen to forego making a camera body that meets picPerfect's price and feature set desires. None of us really knows why, but it's fairly safe to say that it likely has to do with Canon's decision makers concluding that offering a lower-priced, stills-only body would not be advantageous for the company in the marketplace. One can dream, though, right?
Personally, I'm in the camp of "the stills features of the R5 look absolutely splendid, and though I'll likely rarely ever use the video features, I'm eagerly anticipating shooting with this beast and will likely buy it as soon as I've scraped my pennies together!"
* Newer high-throughput architecture would be overkill for the moderate sensor resolution and throughput, right?