People are freaking expensive. I think that is something that you miss easily.
200k sounds expensive for a printer, yet that is the cost of 1 guy for three years (assuming western country).
The 200k machine just has to be a small bit better than the 2500 machine for it to pay off so fast it is ridiculous. A commodity approach to printing sounds like it would involve a lot of quality checks and other really pricy manual things that would eat up that 200k in under a year.
If you can remove all human costs, then yes, commodity gear is likely better, because you are paying for gear that knows that humans are expensive, so even small savings in humans translate to a ton of cost, and so the professional gear is priced accordingly.