There are other values in a camera system than resolving power.
In theory all landscape photography could be made with a single very wide lens with very high resolving power, just point and shoot in the general direction, and then crop to desired composition when you get home. I would not find that shooting process as enjoyable. I gave up stitching because it was too mechanical in the field and too much focus on post-processing. I want to enjoy the process out in the field as much as possible. Precise framing in-camera with flexible view-camera movements and pressing the shutter for a single capture is what I like the most.
I think when you design a camera system you should think about the whole process, how this system is going to be used. It's also about design, how you think lenses should render the scene, if it should be all about resolving power, or if there are other factors.
I like a system which hits a nice tradeoff between conflicting goals. Depending on how the system is going to be used there will be different tradeoffs. I like a system which feels like it's made for the style of work I do, rather than an overkill design which is all about measurable performance.
If we could make high resolution sensor and still keep sanity in terms of camera and optical designs that would be alright, but I don't find that too likely looking at the history so far, at least not in MF space where resolving power and sharp at pixel peep does seem to be a really important selling point. If MF becomes 200 megapixel sensors with narrow angular response that would kill the nice tradeoff I find in the Schneider Digitar system today, and even the weak retrofocus Rodenstocks would have to be redesigned.
The small format cameras are less threatened, there's already a tradition that you don't really need to be sharp at pixel peep, and there's no format today which have really short flange distance so narrow angular response is not really a problem.
I hope MF will continue to provide possibilities for unique optical solutions and systems rather than narrowing down to just a larger 135 format. The larger format allows to hit a tradeoff with larger pixels, higher pixel count and wider angular response all in one package, which I think is where MF should be with current sensor technology.
