They are discontinuing products that were made between 15 and 9 years ago. They will still work and mine still does. The issue is that the hardware cannot deal with today’s software.
The alternative would be to limit software upgrades so that they can work on a 15 year old processor. That would make all future products uncompetitive and probably cause the demise of the company.
For example, I recently junked a mid-2012 iMac because by mid 2019 it could no longer support the latest OSX operating system. Should I stay with the old operating system and, for example, be subject to new security threats that will not be subject to upgrades?
The Devialet Expert streaming card was designed for units first sold in 2010. The unit I bought was manufactured at that time. They produced a new streaming card in 2017 and offered it as part of a substantial upgrade to the DAC and amplifier at a very reasonable €3,000, typically about 20% of the cost of a replacement system, but with a huge increase in overall performance. By comparison, that was the same cost of the the upgrade kit from PWD Mk2 to DSD DAC, and that is just one component.
And what about the DMP? Non-serviceable only about 2 years after it was first released due to hardware redundancy.
Sonos owners, and I have a Play5 and Soundbar, should be delighted that their units have remained upgradeable for so long, far longer than anything else I can think of. It is astonishing that they have achieved that on 15 year old hardware.
The lesson for manufacturers of more expensive audio like PS Audio is to make systems as modular as possible or as cheap to manufacture as possible. Having previously been faced with the high upgrade cost of a PWD Mk2 DAC, one reason I went for Devialet was because it was modular, in fact buying an old unit ex-demo and immediately sending it from the dealer to Devialet for an upgrade, so it had complete new internals. Linn have done this for years, so have dCS.
Meanwhile, my 7 year old Sonos Playbar continues to do excellent service as a TV speaker and hopefully will do so for many years to come.