Actually, the Mac Mini is the most critical piece of the M1 support plan, and no, they didn't screw it up.
There will be racks of them for development & testing purposes. With any new silicon, there was going to be a ramp up, time for software that takes advantage of the processor. By putting out a $700 machine, it's a great example of 'minimum spec testing' - as in worst case this is what a user experiences. Emulators are great, but physical hardware is always the benchmark.
Yes, there will be more powerful chips with greater spec's, more RAM, etc, but Apple had to release something that folks can debug on now.