Are FPGA's getting too complex?

Well I agree with the basic idea behind having higher complex (and thus higher priced) parts to come earlier to the break-even point between NRE and money earned by selling parts.

But there is one other issue besides this that is related to regulations of the intended target application's domain. Assuming you are not as free as possible in choosing your architecture but have to observe regulations on design, validation, verification, ... Especially if there are different rules for logic design (like FPGA) and controller design (like µC/µP) the idea of a SoC to combine "best of both" (technological) turn to be a huge increase of work as both domains are combined. If you are in regulations you would either use an µC/µP OR a FPGA but never combine both (if not really required by application) and moreover if you have to combine these types you would not do this on one chip as this chip design get's highly complex in V&V...

Finally the problem of the time gap for development of new designs for the CycloneV has been increased very much by the (IMHO) strange timing of ALTERA. I did a design which I'd like to do with the new announced Cyclone V (now it uses a mid-size Cyclone IV). When we did this design ALTERA had announced the Cyclone V already some month ago but it was years to come between the announcement and the first production units being available. Maybe the "there are no engineering samples available" statement I was frustrated of when we did the design saved myself from getting blamed by my boss and customers, as all units we produced the last years would not have been produceable due to the missing CycloneV.

Thus it is one side of the medal to blame the developers not to place orders for the new chips due to their latency in development, but the other side is that the devices should not be announced if there are no units to ship in time to support development, prototyping and first batch of electronics...

Just my two cents :-)