Yeah it was a steal! But I think the state of Star Wars back then was a burden for Lucas, who knew something bigger than Clone Wars had to be done in the next decade and he just wasn’t able to endure another trilogy (and seeing how difficult it seems to „just“ make a good trilogy and the hate that follows a bod one, I can see what his difficulties were). And he didn’t need to share with anyone, how many billions does one guy need in the latter half of his life?

Sounds like planned obsolescence to me. The worst thing for the silicon industry about silicon is: it doesn’t really degrade. With Moore‘s law alive and kicking the obsolescence came from new use cases and better performance. But without it we could use silicon for years or even decades.