I posted about this on the runaway pricing thread the other day that got deleted.
Perhaps Lionel is working towards some flavor of DCC compatibility and control for Legacy-equipped engines (indeed, the presence of DCC in the hybrid brass 4-4-0s is interesting). If they don't want to make their own remotes anymore, hobbyists could use any DCC-compatible equipment they wanted -- walk-around cabs, computers, you name it. Lionel could still sell Base3 and even potentially a DCC-to-Legacy converter module as requirements to play in this world. Keep Legacy proprietary if you wish, but they should give heavily invested hobbyists some way to communicate with the vast world of DCC that the rest of model railroading uses.
Also: not being able to use your own sounds is a glaring weakness of the current Lionel platform. I don't care about five different bells and whistles -- I want to upload my own that is prototypically correct. More than anything else, this needs to be fixed.
I generally like what Lionel is doing these days. And no one buys a $2k engine and then complains about the cost of the controller and other stuff required to make it run. But when I'm dropping that much cash I should be able to control that engine however I want, and play whatever sounds I want. This is about choice, not price.
