I actually wouldn't mind if you were asking for continuity across the range. It's just good design. I think the VST control should be universal across the range because the fundamental capabilities are identical in oscillator choice, effects, arpeggiator, etc...
Personally, I don't care what upgrades a company might make after the fact, I have the hardware I do. I'm not going to get jealous that someone who has a different model than I got an improvement. That would instill more faith in the company and it's culture. I would be happy that I owned one of their products because it means that in the future... I will be treated with the same attitudes and desires for an improved product.
What I don't like is that it's an artificial limit being imposed on the hardware. Accessing 16 channels of MIDI is not exactly a modern feature... And I'm pretty confident that this is not how the Snow initially shipped when it was first made. My colleague swears that he was able to access 16 channels, but he did run out of voices VERY quickly.
What you paid for is the increased voice count and outputs and the additional hardware required to account for those things (which means you have less inconvenience of rendering to audio and maintaining greater flexibility). Because someone might have buyers remorse is never a good reason to weaken a product's design or not improve it.
Perhaps access believes it is making more money this way by forcing users who want the tool to be fully useful to dish out an extra $1000. But I know many people who are not buying the snow because of this workflow problem and the desktop unit prices itself out of their range.
But it appears that that is their strategy and making a simple improvement that already exists in other hardware of theirs runs counter to that. Personally, I think pushing more volume (by improving their most accessible model) is worth more in profit to them AND I get more usefulness out of the same tool.
That indicates to me where much of the company culture lies and there are alternatives to the Virus Ti Desktop at that price range that offer similar functionality and quality (And Keyboard Keys) so why make it more tempting for me to consider a competitor?