Welcome to the reality of mass production, sales and margins
A great many manufacturers will be using this modular approach to for the HW & SW, its not just the test & Measurment industry that uses these models.
How on do you think a Rigol or any other brand at these price points makes money on a £400 scope? it's shipped, import charges and any vat is added you need to a lot of the low end models to start making any kind of profit. So by spreading the load across numerous models they can recoup the R&D costs.
Do you think Tek, R&S and Keysight are not the same with the lower and mid priced scopes?. The only reason the more high end scopes are not 'unlocked' to such a degree is purely cost and physically getting your grubby mits on an actual unit!
You do have the added issue of if you drop a boo boo and its totally bricks up
your £50K+ test gear, somehow the manufacturer *may* not cover this under warranty
If you wish to purchase quite complex and reasonably accuracte bench test equipment for what 'back in the day lad' would have cost the equivlient of close to 10 years salarly in the mid 80's to under £500 then you have to understand the laws of what we affectionately 'banging 'em cheap'
So nothing new here at all.