Because they have to continuously keep the share holders and CEO happy. Keep you talking about them year after year and keep their business going.

There's a huge difference between what's on paper and what happens in real. I recall back at my VFX school that the black magic pocket cinema camera use to be a pain in the ass to do chromakey greenscreen while the GH2 hacked with moon was far easier and gave much better result. It for sure isn't an alexa, but with the right people behind it (high quality gear, strong DP and very good color grader) you could push the limit. It takes time and effort to output a shot correctly, it's not because the paper says it does 32 bit OpenEXR at 16K with 20 stops of dynamic range that your footage will suddenly look fabulous. It has in fact more chances to do the opposite since that kind of options are meant to get a tons of work in post-production that most people don't even bother with.

I get profit and no doubt that's what's been going on forever. It's just frustrating that all the features exist on store shelves, just not in a single camera.

But with Blackmagic offering 10bit in their entry BMPCC and Panny with the GH4, can't we say 10bit is doable? If 4K is being offered in phones, how on earth is it not in the E-M5II?

Based on what Samsung has done with the NX1 and the fact that they don't have an existing pro line to worry about, they're probably the one that could give us a kickass camera. The question is: will they?

We got the near perfect camera several years ago--several flavors, in fact. Once the cameras went to HD resolution with interchangeable lenses and APS-C or larger sensors, there were no meaningful quality issues in the way of the camera's performance anymore. Everything beyond that is primarily designed to allow people to achieve good results with less knowledge and experience.

If you were to go back ten years (even five) and offer any of today's prosumer cameras for sale, you would completely blow people's minds. But we nitpick features because we've become used to being offered something new every 18 months. It's great for us, unless we start holding off on projects or overthinking cameras because they don't yet have X feature.

I still use my GH2 cameras because they are still so feature-rich (and at no new cost for me). The GH4 and A7s are quite tempting, but I will likely hold off until the next generation at which point, it's hard to imagine ever needing a new camera again.

That said, the new frontier for these cameras is usability. There are still a lot of features that would make the cameras more simple, efficient and pleasurable to use, but they don't seem as exciting on a spec sheet. However, real pros know the difference. This usability is one of the things that makes an Alexa worlds better than a Red, for example.

I'd love for Nikon or Olympus to step up. I'm sure they both could offer great stuff. But they seem stuck with the traditional camera manufacturer mindset. Plus Olympus' financial difficulty / shenanigans makes me think they aren't able, either fiscally or culturally, to risk venturing out of their traditional markets.

Blackmagic has done some awesome stuff and certainly has delivered (really late in some cases). I can see BM adding various slow motion rates to cams and offering the BMPCC in 4K, but I can't see them offering image stabilization.

On the other hand, Samsung kinda bowled people over with their quick and awesome firmware update. Plus they've promised more to come. They've certainly got the financial and manufacturing resources. The NX1 has shown they're serious.