Okay, I'm not in manufacturing and didn't stay at the HI Express but help me a bit...SW did and stopped. The others - who knows. Tooling up for a less popular caliber may not be the best economic idea.
S&W doesn't throw out formerly used tooling, do they? (I mean... Colt does... but I digress...)
Just saying, what is the REAL overhead in just making more of something you obviously already designed, tested, produced and shipped? Same frames they make a gujillion of, same cylinders with a different sized hole. Maybe you have to make some new barrels. I think S&W can handle making barrels.
The real answer is that S&W is LONG detached from it's consumer base. Reads like an opinion but far closer to demonstrated fact.
Seems like a disease that much of the gun industry suffers from and always has. Then there is a company like Taurus, all the guts to try almost anything just to see if it sticks -- too bad they have never figured out "quality."