The printing cost for the keycaps...
Weren't the original C64 keyboard keys double-shot with two different colors of plastic to ensure nothing could possibly wear off over time? I never owned a C64 back in the day, so I have no idea. Many good keyboards of that era did use double-shot keys, even HP calculators, and that's why many of the keycaps hold up even to this very day.
...the upcoming Commodore 64 Ultimate (https://www.commodore.net) will use the basic Blingboard technology developed by Jim. However, Jim refers to the C64 Ultimate keyboard as "Blingboard64 Lite Edition". In other words, that keyboard in the C64 Ultimate will be less powerful...
I have one of chose C64 Ultimates on pre-order (
sales tracker here) so I appreciate that info very much. And by "less powerful" it seems that many features that are "missing" in the "lite" keyboard are found in the C64 Ultimate's computer PCB, as per what Jim says:
"The Lite Edition... has basically none of the advanced features... The U64 itself provides the features."
So because the C64 Ultimate provides a lot of functionality, it's not the end of the world that the "lite" keyboard doesn't offer all the features that its full-featured version, and those feature are mentioned by Jim here:
"...it has support for USB and Bluetooth BLE, a dual core CPU, expansion port, wireless programming, macros (recording and playback), 2MB of RAM fully accessible from the C64 side, ability to off-load calculations to the keyboard's CPU, and much, much, more!"
I don't think we're missing USB and Bluetooth based on the feature set of the C64 Ultimate, and it has an expansion port too from what I understand. Not sure what "wireless programming is" or why that is lust worthy. Ditto about "macros." Having 2MB RAM on a C64 is interesting, but most apps probably wouldn't take advantage of it. It's the main reason why I've never lusted after a RAM expansion board for my Apple IIc. Not sure what C64 apps benefit from "off-loading calculations." And of course, I don't know what "much, much more" means.
That's not to say the full-featured keyboard might be useful to some people, but it doesn't seem that the "lite" keyboard is limiting the forthcoming C64 Ultimate all that much. Or am I overlooking something?