They don't? Really? There are entire forums devoted to e-readers, with feature war threads just as rancorous as you get on neogaf. And you know what? People still buy the cheaper models. Many many enthusiasts buy the non-3g paperwhite. Many enthusiasts buy the $69 kindle over the paperwhite because it has low-tech physical buttons instead of a high tech touchscreen. I would consider myself a hardcore reader, I've owned pretty much every e-reader made, I've been "paper-free" since before the first e-ink reader. I own both an iPad and a Kindle, and if I had to choose one, I would choose the kindle in a heartbeat, despite it costing less than half as much and doing a lot less than the iPad.
Like I've said many times. People's buying decisions rarely hinge on relative power, and much more often hinge on what their friends are buying, whether it does the one specific thing they want (skype, for instance, or Kinect), whether it has the games they want to play (Halo, or Forza, or God of War, for instance), and generally, most importantly, price. If two devices both meet people's requirements, and one is cheaper, a goodly proportion of people will buy the cheaper one, even if the more expensive one is theoretically better.
If your theory were true, we'd all be playing only PC games, since the PC is a lot more powerful than any of the consoles, and anyone buying a console would have horrible buyers remorse.
