They've put themselves in a corner. Fable was too good and they gave it away with the $20 plan. It had to be a big step from Opus 4.8 to show progress, and Opus 4.8 is GREAT at coding in many different domains.

But they're getting killed on token cost. They have to get people paying more for tokens. So then they put Fable in the $200 plan and release Opus 5. I'm suspicious of Opus 5. It is mostly worse than 4.8. It _seems_ like they nerfed it to create more distance between it and Fable.

So what have most of us done? Stayed on Opus 4.8. The statistics bear this out. 4.8 still dominates.

Now they're stuck. If they take 4.8 away, everyone will riot. If they make Opus 5.x better than 4.8, they disincentivize everyone from moving to Fable and most importantly, paying more.

Really, all they can do is take the L for now and just let 4.8 be the apex of the $20 pro plan for the foreseeable future while they work like hell to make Fable THAT much better that it earns the $200 to $infinity that they really want everyone to pay.