If a thread gets dominated by negativity without any real information being added, it's off course, period. btw. If any thread goes off-topic without anyone intervening, feel free to report it - we'll take appropriate action. I'll be happy to be corrected if I overdo things - but I'll stand my ground in this case.
We can easily change the tone in this thread, however, and I'm all for it. It'd be a real pity to let an opportunity to contemplate the Z fc's value and impact slip away.
I'm not happy about the delays either, but I think that's just the way things are, and no reason to start bashing Nikon. If Thom Hogan does that on his own site, it's his decision, but I don't remember his complaints having any positive impact, ever. He may however have driven people away from Nikon, thus damaging them and their ability to stay hot on the market; they've been reorganising, downsizing and streamlining to stay in business, that's for sure - and some failed attempts at reading the market have hurt their reputation, that's also true.
Whatever the causes, this doesn't take away from the quality of their products I'm lucky enough to own and use daily, and I'm frankly fed up with comments from people who can't know what they're talking about because they haven't used any recent Nikon cameras for any relevant period of time. If you want to read up on those, you can do so on Thom Hogan's site - he's very, very critical and loves himself rambling on about all of Nikon's perceived mistakes, but whenever he's taking a Z camera through its paces, he comes away with a pretty positive overall impression; that's even true when he declares a camera of no use to himself, like the Z 50. I see where he's coming from, and even though he thinks he does, he's not helping, but he does thorough work and has loads of technical expertise, so it'd be wrong to write him off just because I disagree with his stance and methods. It's equally wrong to see him as a guru or wise man, though. He's not - he's truely experienced and has a wealth of knowledge, but he's also opinionated and thinks the world of himself.
However, since I absolutely enjoy the Z 50, a deceptively simple, almost minimalist, yet impressively competent tool, I'm absolutely certain the Z fc will be a worthwhile camera in its own right, and one I'll be happy to own whenever it turns up on my doorstep. That it presses a few buttons on the "want" front doesn't hurt; as I've said before, a camera that - pretty successfully, as far as I've been able to see - mimics one of my all-time favourites, the FE, in terms of gestalt and feel, should be lots of fun. That I'm a fan of some of the design decisions in general feels like icing on the cake - e.g. I personally do like fully articulating screens for many reasons - but mostly because you can just fold them away, protecting them as well as making chimping just that little bit harder and less likely.
I've used Olympus, Panasonic, Fujifilm, Sony and Nikon MILCs over the last couple of years, and I'll state here that Nikon presents the most enjoyable package overall - for me, of course, so YMMV. The Z 6 is fantastically usable, the Z 7 II is the powerhouse it should be, i.e. even quicker than the already swift Z 6, and of course, with much higher resolution and better AF. And the Z 50 is fast, nimble (with quirks), compact and no-frills - it's not the most full-featured offering on the market (the X-S1 and, in my view, the OM-D E-M5 III take that title in this class), but it's all around competent and just works. Furthermore, technically, the Z fc already is a Z 50 II (Thom Hogan got that one dead wrong) - what can be wrong about that?
Anyhow, that Nikon now add something genuinely refreshing - after concentrating on the eminently usable, yet obviously utilitarian - is a good thing in my book.
And by the way, yes, depending on lens choice over time, it's possible that the Z fc alone can make me sell my whole Fujifilm setup; truth be told, I'm close to doing that anyway, as much as I enjoy using the X-E3 at times - but with the Z 35mm f/1.8 S and Z 85mm f/1.8 S being available and as good as they are (on the Z 50 as well as the FX bodies), the 90mm f/2, and, to a lesser extend, the 35mm f/1.4 see less and less use. Even the 18-55mm is struggling against the pedestrian Z 16-50mm - something I wouldn't have believed if someone had told me so. So, the X-E3 gets used with the 27mm (super-compact, competent) and 23mm (capable of great images). And the 28mm SE is incoming ...
Another camera that may not stick around is the Panasonic GX9 - but that camera, paired with its 15mm f/1.7 soulmate, is superb for its size and price and will be very hard to supplant. Yes, the X-E3 is slightly more enjoyable in use - but the GX9 is considerably faster for how I like to shoot (not quite as fast as the Z 50, but close). That's why it survived the arrival of the X-E3; still, I wouldn't be surprised if the Z fc with 28mm SE superseded it.
Call me a fanboy, whatever, but: For the first time in nine years, I'm not regretting one single acquisition for a system. It all works as intended - i.e. superbly well.
M.