There is a crowd...albeit a small crowd of cinematic writers out there who money is no object. I mean , if you just scored a few blockbusters for Sony or Dreamworks...499.00 is nothing. There aren't many of them and those people really don't look on NI as anything spectacular compared to some of the specialty sound sets available for cinematic music which cost much much more. Some of them were probably given free examples to rate and test for their opinions....a few of them might throw some change out there for that set which will be just another tool in the toolbox.
Where many of the strings sets come up short is in realistic attacks...nothing I have tried yet really can duplicate an authentic string attack. I wonder if this set can do it realistically? Many composers are using real instruments to augment a sound to give it a more real feel..
But yeah...I doubt they will move much product at that price to the masses. The people who simply need a small section here and there probably won't bite at 499.00