It's the same story with the predecessor, the Pandora. It took forever to come out, while the preorder price steadily increased. It turned out to be pretty great when it finally arrived, but the specs did not look good anymore at that point.

And it seems to be even worse for the Pyra, especially since gpd has finally understood the need and is now manufacturing similar devices.

I think the concept is good but maybe it would be better to design a solid handheld with a slot in option for a pi or some similar form factor sbc. That way, users could actually upgrade the device and keep it current. The hard part these days seems not be the actual computing, but the quality and usability of the screen, keyboard and game controls.