reiella
Explorer
There is no doubt, NONE, that WotC could have easily added $15 worth of more material to the boxed Starter. More art, a battlemap, character counters or heck even plastic minis. They consciously and deliberately opted not to do those things specifically to keep the price down and encourage potential buyers to take a look at the far more impressive advanced books coming out. I agree, the comparison made between the two was uneven. Still, i found it interesting to see the differences explained.
They also are campaigning fairly strongly on the Theatre of the Mind being the default scenario now, so I imagine not including maps/tokens/etc may have been an intentional choice on that route.