It's reasonable to expect a premium for being the first to market with a card, and Gateway's $90 initial price tag was that premium. It's now gone, and the price of their cards are starting to come down as a result. We've seen it countless times in the scene - first to market commands a premium, other people follow either through their own work or clong, and then prices come down.
I don't like what R4i did / is doing at all, but it would never have happened had they not sniffed out a huge amount of profit to be made. When Gateway was selling at $90 and likely earning margins of around $60 per card, they saw opportunity to fit in the middle and still make money. If Gateway's margins were only $10 per card, R4i wouldn't be anywhere near the space, GW would be selling twice the cards they are now, etc.
GW needs to fund development where R4i clearly doesn't, and there's some money there. How much is anyone's guess. I doubt they have a team of 10 programmers working on feature enhancements, but I don't think the couple they have are working for free, either.
There's a TON of money in this space for the quick-to-market teams. Anyone want to hazard a guess as to how many Gateways have been sold? 1000? Too low? Gateway's per-unit profit was (and, honestly, still is) pretty healthy, so multiply times that. Again, not saying "F them, they got theirs" - working in IT development myself, I'd never say that - but understand that the market changed from when they introduced. They were first out, took an option that saw very large per-unit profit, attracted low cost competition (and the parasitic tendencies) as a result, and are now moving into the second phase of the market, which is dealing with lower cost competition and positioning themelves as the premium offering. That has happened in every market since the beginning of time.
Remember this - you're buying these cards (Gateway, R4i, etc) for the functionality they have right at this moment. If you're buying based on "well, in 6 months it will support XYZ", you're smarter to choose the option that has a better chance of getting there. No guarantees either way, but I'd suspect that if Gateway didn't make the feature available, R4i/Orange/Link/etc sure aren't getting it.