All irrelevant for the sake of this particular discussion around the possible future of Nikon’s mirrorless rollout. One top end body and next tier down in price and all features other than pixel count the territory currently occupied by the Z7 and what I would call a prosumer body, the most attractive to members of this forum.
I'm not sure what you are saying here about the Z7, whether you are referring to the Z6, or to an alternative to the Z6 as being "next tier down in price", or whether you meant that the Z6 is irrelevant and that a different form of cheaper Z7 should be introduced, in which case it would be what?
I think there are too many different models on the market, meant mostly, I'd guess, to catch buyers in all wallet segments. Again, I see a parallel with the American car industry of old, where Ford, Chrysler and GM each offered wide ranges of similar car sub-brands - many on the same common company chassis, that reflected buyer ability to spend, but at the price of keeping alive too many product lines that cost a lot of money. Eventually, many of those sub-brands were discontinued because they split the market and kept alive heavy manufacturing costs that cutting the number of sub-brands eased and simplified on all levels. I think cameras are no different if you are the company making them: you have to rationalize.
To be blunt about it, photographers buying on price have to come to a decision: either they want quality or they do not. And on their part, the camera builders have to understand that their market has changed because of the invention of the smart 'phone. Speaking as somebody who earned his living with cameras, were I not still burning up with love for the medium (depite struggling with an equally powerful frustration with it), I think that suddenly stripped of the knowledge of what different focal lengths can offer my work, a smart 'phone would probably be all I'd have today. It makes photography easy, casual, and devoid of the need to think about it before leaving home, and deciding whether carting along a heavy, vulnerable and crime-attracting piece of cumbersome gear that may not even be used in anger on that specific day makes sense. Of course, that leaves showing off as a non-starter.
One essential thing I would do: remove the video function from stills cameras: let them be what they always were: stills cameras. If I had an interest in motion photography, I'd get a video camera. I neither want to buy such a feature in my stills bodies nor do I want to pay for it to live there unused. It's an unwanted complication, a further point of possible failure and a silly distraction; dump it.
The advances in sensor ability have brought digital and film cameras very close in one respect: both are sitting on a plateau, where if the status quo fails to please, the only different ways to go are off the edge or, perhaps, to develop another artificially constructed hill up which to force the troops to climb. Perhaps falling sales reveal that the troops have mutinied: they have had enough, thanks very much, the plateau is very comfortable, just as it is.
To conclude, I think each camera company needs to do several things: limit the number of competing models it manufactures and accept that the lowest rung has vanished; spend more on final inspection (
have a final inspection department?) to ensure that no customer ever has to go through the frustration, anger and disappointment of having to return a faulty product. I never, once, bought a film Nikon or Hasselblad that had to be returned because it was not working properly on delivery, and I bought several of each. (I exclude the F4s which never self-loaded properly first time, but that was the beginning of silly, pointless features.) Reading today of people who are on their third or fourth new, faulty body seems incredible. Make fewer models, but make them well.
