Well there you go. I 'would imagine' Nikon HAVE done their market research. Large companies like thet do tend to do such things, it's how they manage to make successful products...
Well, I'd take 'crippled' by it's more literal term, to mean 'severely damaged', rather than simple restricted in some way. Semantics, but I do feel it's important to use language correctly, as much as possible.
Why not just say it's 'restricted'? Bit less dramatic.
But you asserted as such. With the caveat of 'imo', but still.
The Z6 has a maximum fups of 5.5, if you want full AF and AE. Otherwise it's locked down. That, to me, is not really a viable system if you're shooting very fast moving actions, where you want the focus to be spot on every time. It's a spray 'n' pray mode.
The Z5, as far as I can gather, offers full AF and AE with it's 4.5fups. So, not all that far behind the Z6 now really, on equal terms, is it? Praps adding on the higher fups mode would have meant a compromise elsewhere, created additional cooling etc issues. I really don't see it as 'crippled' by comparison, at all. Just slightly lower spec. And once prices settle down, I think it will be a very good lower cost option to the Z6.
So that's sorted that one out then.