You obviously have not seen the Schumacher cars, which have changed significantly from one generation to the next in the last few years.

But I find it funny how people still confuse "novelty" with new.

Tamiya is the least innovative of all manufacturers. They are doing novelty cars things with irrelevant product lines because it doesn't matter and they keep their fanboys happy by taking their money. At top level, nobody takes big risks (save for the soon to be released Serpent, which will be interesting to follow if it is going to be a trailblazer or another dead end). Just look at the TRF cars. The most bland cars on the market right now.

Not to mention the novelty you speak of is not that new either. Kawada has had more than three generations of top notch single belt, centralised chassies back 10-15 years ago. Others have done it even before that.

Then again, you have newcomers like Gizmo but these people have a long way to go before you can call their platform proven and they use a lot of already existing parts from other manufacturers (which seems to have become a burden for their supply chain as I predicted some time ago - but let's hope this is just a momentary hiccup and they move to 100% in-house production - no mean feat for a small company).

Even Awesomatix moved away from their initially over engineered cars aimed at capitalising on the superior efficiency of shaft drive simply because they found some problems can't be solved within the constraints of acceptable cost AND have the car competitive at the same time.

And you can also take a look at Capricorn who have a really nice car with innovative suspension holders and minimal footprint bulkheads.

As far as I see, the name of the game is symmetry, and I think Xray doesn't have much to do. Maybe do away with the battery tape slots.

Apart from that, everybody seems focused on minor tweaks, perhaps more to do with streamlining production and minimising costs, especially in the current economic climate.