I understand your statement but.... different needs?? What about this need, and I'm sure I'm not alone on this.
I don't want to spent that much money to buy HD. I still want to use a High-End converter of my own choice and I need 128 tracks and record my tracks on a 64 H/W buffer. I also want to have ADC, so no plugin will cause any latency.
Don't think they will produce this version of PT for 150 bucks or less.
If you can do with MP what you can do with LE or even HD. I'll bet ya they're gonna sell more MP versions.
I'm here with PT 8 (MP) with a Lightbridge and a
SSL AD/DA converter.
I got 24 I/O's with
Solid State Logic quality. I'm sure many big guys (studio's) will setup such a chain if MP was a full functional Protools. And I can assure you this one is working excellent here, love Protools MP, so I'm not complaining at all.
I don't think that M-Powered quite often works out more expensive than LE. Just look at the option in LE, you can do everything in LE what MP can do. But not the other way around.