Thinking about it a little more, I wonder how much of the reasoning behind not making it a .204 to enable the industry to get behind it with minimal investment using the .204 bullets they already have was to prevent rednecks from trying to (p)reload the cartridges with those other bullets.

But even with that hypothetical, Darwinistic downside, if I had been the product manager responsible for this one, I'd have wanted to exploit the existing ecosystem of .204 barrel making and bullets to enable the whole industry to get on board with minimal investment and start cranking out product. It seems like if that worked, it would be natural to extend the concept to a .22 WMR case and then the .17 WSM (making it what it should have been all along) in due time.

It's possible that someone put a stake in the ground and said bottlenecking the cartridge was a non-starter, but with HMR and HM2 demonstrated as viable, I don't know how that would be a dealbreaker. Obviously, I don't design and manufacture cartridges for a living.

This just feels to me like bean counters overriding gun guys and ending up owning all of what will eventually be nothing.