Why so few 500 series reverbs and delays?

But there's an abundance of everything else in 500 format so I have a hard time buying that it's a space saving thing.

I have a Mr. Springgy 500 that’s actually really cool and really vintage sounding - which for being dsp or whatever - I haven’t found it’s sound itb.

I still regret not buying the Moog 500 series analog delay when they made them.  If someone else were to make a high end analog delay suitable for vocals etc. I'd buy it.   I do own two 500 series Tank Drivers, the unit Radial makes for driving any spring tank.  

God I want the Moog delay bad. Going for almost1200-1600 each now lol only stopped making them as the AD chips no longer are made.

JLM audio is coming out with a customizable effects unit for 500 serise

http://instagram.com/p/BvMS00lgThz

Looks cool for sure. Plus it's stereo

The best part about outboard effects is the not so good converters they use. No plugin ever sounds like them. Some of the old units out there you can do recall via midi so not that hard to integrate into your flow. I'm hoping to do that with a few boxes I have. And lexicon pcm units aren't that hard to dial back in. Nothing sounds better for a delay either.

Okay, I get what you're saying now.

And yet..

PCM42...still the greatest delay unit ever.
Bricasti Reverb..one of the best reverbs ever.

Hardware is still great in this case too.

I understand why we don't need digital effects in a 500 series format--I'm happy to do that in a box.  But why not a high end stereo analog delay with perhaps different chip options?  I'd be interested in that, and if they can fit an analog delay in a guitar pedal they can fit it in a 500 series format.  
As for the something to drive external spring tanks THIS works great.  

Behringer, through a subsidiary, is the only analog delay chip manufacturer that I’m aware of. Would be tough to launch a product at scale with a bunch of NOS chips.

The Bricasti plug-in control is discontinued.

Out of curiosity what exactly do you know about the nuances of audio development (or even large application design)? Whilst it may seem like a "powerful" method often it's quite the opposite, from a business standpoint though it's a good idea. 

It's far easier to develop / run heavy algorithm's across multiple Blackfin / SHARC DSP's than it is to develop efficient multi-threaded code for PC cpu's. It's a lot harder for people to rip a plugin stored in a HW box, there's far less support issues (which can be a massive financial drain), they don't have to put additional investment into multi-platform / multi-DAW support etc. etc.

If said developer is a lone wolf or part of a small team (<= 30) then it would always be a better option for them to go HW (actually in some instances for us as well). Major respect to those who create amazing native plugins by themselves or in small teams, it seems like an almost impossible task.! 

Although there's benefits for the end user as well, they won't break when an os version (or Pro Tools plugin version) gets updated. You can use them with a desk, there's little in the way of latency concerns which is ideal for tracking (yes I know plugins nowadays run near zero latency via DSP based consoles with a front end but it's the same thing as external HW really ain't it?).

Finally not everyone has 8 / 16 / 32 / 48 core (high frequency) modern I7 / Ryzen machines capable of running <Insert however many instances here> extremely heavy plugin's, for mass consumption purposes native plugins are generally limited by a lower end arbitrary target or lowest common denominator (like PC games made for console). When you develop hardware there's little in the way of guesswork (in the greater picture) and you take advantage of DSP operations to it's full extent, never having to worry about people buying your plugin and whining about it not being able to run on a dual core I3.

So yeah, there's a lot of pro's. Although because the likes of UA / Metric Halo have combined this stuff into an all in one (combining interfaces with DSP / console / plugin's) with PC based control mechanisms, rackmount and / or 500 series individual components again become a moot point.

I'm looking at my three guitar delay pedals that also handle line level (and a chorus pedal that is KILLER on synths) and I have to imagine the hardware delay/reverb thing is pretty well handled by the myriad of guitar pedals out on the market.

I dig 'em for mixing purposes, anyway.