Technology: Rubber domes with springs? How expensive are they?
:facepalm: Not sure if you're joking or not, but the whole capacitive sensing thing isn't exactly trivial.
Isn't the technology associated with it like 20-25 years old though?
It depends what technology you refer to. Capacitive sensing surely has been around for awhile, but I'd imagine that there's some algorithms and coding necessary to make the keyboard operate smoothly (as opposed to the relatively simple anti-bounce that regular switches require) - this is something they will expect to be paid back for. Also, if Topre manufactures to tighter tolerances than other manufacturers, one would expect them to charge for that as well. I obviously have no clue how they figure their pricing, I'm just listing possible options for high prices on Topre boards.
All of that sounds about right, it just seems like after 20ish years they would've made back any costs they might've had for R&D, coding, algorithms, and other costs. Even so, if you can charge a premium for something and people will happily buy it even at the higher price, the obvious business decision is to keep charging the premium price until people are unwilling to pay it anymore.
The age of a technology doesn't always equate to the technology being much cheaper to produce as it ages. Some technologies require higher amounts of precision. The more precision that's required, the more expensive it is to produce, even if the technology is 50 years old.
Now, I have no idea if a Topre PCB is more expensive to produce than a discrete switch PCB, but since Topre is made in Japan, and most keyboard PCBs are made in China, that's a factor as well.
Well, generally speaking, technology tends to follow a formula of having a high price at release with a decline in price as time goes by, with another spike in price if the tech isn't produced near as much e.g. DDR2 RAM vs. DDR3 RAM. That obviously doesn't mean everything needs to, but I honestly can't think of a single thing tech related that has stayed steady in pricing.
The PCB does seem intriguing though, and I would be interested to see if a substantial part of the higher price is related to that. Making something in Japan vs. China would definitely result in a price increase but how much that is I wouldn't expect anyone to know except a handful of manufacturers.