I have nothing against/for including a sampling feature personally, and have no stake in the debate for/against, these are just my musings coming from someone who creates software professionally and occasionally hardware for fun.
But something that the argument “people think if the feature was there they would be forced to use it” fails to take into consideration is that developing products (both software/hardware side of things) is a battle of priorities, not only “what is possible”. As I mentioned in another post (Introducing Syntakt - #1566 by vblr), adding another feature, especially big ones, would make some other feature receive less focus (or be removed/not included at all).
When it comes to the Syntakt, the focus seems pretty clear (it’s written on the machine itself!): “12 track drum computer & synthesizer”. Probably this was stated first or very early in the design process of the machine, so whenever they start thinking “Should we add X?”, the answer would take into consideration if it fits with the overall goals. As mentioned earlier, adding sampling would mean that need to focus less on some other feature, if that “other feature” was related to drums or synthesis, then clearly sampling would be abandoned in favor of drums/synthesis, as those two things are the focus of this particular device.
Another consideration for any features to be added would be the additional cost of everything from research/development of hardware/software/firmware/additional personal on the project/support and so on, all which add to the final cost of producing the product and ultimately what price they can charge for the product.
Yet another consideration is ongoing maintenance and future updates. The more features the product has, the more difficult and costly it becomes to keep those features up-to-date with updates, and adding new features. If sampling was there as well for example, people expect that piece to also get updates when future firmware updates land, together with updates to the drums and synthesis, making it harder for Elektron to focus on the things they initially set out to build.
All in all, I’m happy with the Syntakt being what it is, and have no need of sampling in it as I have the Octrack for those duties. Would it be cool to have sampling too? Probably yeah. But would I be willing to trade anything of what the current Syntakt could do to get sampling? Definitely not.