It's released to a specialized submarket of all Mathematica users (namely those who are paying out of pocket and who want to save money). That's called price discrimination, and it also exists among the submarkets of students shopping for colleges to attend.
The problem with Mathematica for serious development is that you need Mathematica to run the stuff. So if you write a gadget/utility, only people with Mathematica can run it.
This is an attempt to get deeper penetration into the hobbyist market.