The price of a product is not just the parts plus a few bucks, it's R&D like some people pointed out, it's continued cost like the rent for an office, (tele-) communication, a car, food - just everything that the "someone" who makes it needs to make a living. For small quantities, this makes a large part of the product price.
I agree that prices look high at first sight, but if you take all the cost just for a production run into account, you'll quickly understand that there's not much money to make on a Lyra for 35,- EUR. Before you can start a production run, you have to pay the initial cost for the PCB-photoplots, the drill and milling program, the test-adapter (alltogether a few hundred EUR), a laser stencil for the SMD solderpaste (another 700,- EUR), machine setup and programming (depends on the amount of parts, usually in the 200-300 EUR area).
Not to forget the financing cost - I'm paying a good 500,- EUR monthly to my bank because I have to keep all my products available, meaning I have to pay all this money in advance and keep stock of everything. More money is spent for the registration with the "Stiftung EAR" which handles the electronic waste in Germany. Another chunk of money goes to the chamber of commerce, where I'm a member by law (everyone who owns a business is a member by law).
Let's be optimistic and say that there's 3,- EUR left over from a Lyra sale after all that is paid. After taxes, that's less then 2,- EUR.
Now back to the initial question: A motherboard that has all that stuff integrated. Anyone want to pay the development and production of the first 500 units? Amiga chips are not available any more, un-soldering from existing A1200 boards is not an option, so a new development will ahve to be made. Lots of money to spend - let's say this will take two man-years for a clean implementation, a good 170.000,- EUR in investment. An investor wants to make at least 25% on risk capital, meaning he wants 212500,- back. Even if we could sell 1000 units, R&D would be more than 210,- EUR in the price of such a mainboard.
I'll be at Amiwest this year and will present new developments - book your tickets now, you're going to like it! Oh, and if you have some spare money to invest, I'd be happy to talk to you. That said, you should understand that an Amiga with all the small gadgets inside is the best option we currently have. Anything above that requires serious amounts of money.
Jens Schönfeld