Glock hasn't introduced a totally new pistol or even a rifle in the last 30 years. They keep on rewarming the existing design hoping no one notices they've really done nothing notable since the 1980's.
Something we're seeing pretty clearly in the world of handgun training and competition is a strong and focusing trend toward a functional optimum or pinnacle of design. The best balance of ergonomics, capacity, accuracy, grip size, reliability, manual of arms, fit/finish/action, cost, weight, and so forth -- for the largest group of people.
What started out centuries ago as the dawn of the concept of a compact, easily carried firearm being able to be operated with one hand, has been developed and modified and improved through tens of thousands of iterations -- and hundreds of millions of test units -- until the idea has been distilled down to a set of fairly specific rules for making a handgun that works the "bestest" for the "mostest."
Considering the number of thousands of people getting into shooting sports every year, the tens of thousands of police recruits being instructed in handgun defensive tactics, and the hundreds of engineers and designers racing to get their company a new product that is
even closer to the ultimate "PERFECT" sidearm, it is my belief that we're just about
there, until and unless the next major revolution in small arms design offers something that truly changes the game.
The Glock is not
THE pinnacle. But it is darned close. Maybe the true pinnacle is something a little bit like a cross between a Carcaral and an M&P. With a little bit of xD thrown in. Still a 1% change from the Glock design, in essence.
Complaining that they haven't come up with something NEW is absurd. They've made slight alterations to try to "update" the concept, of course, but few of those changes were
necessary, and they tend to look like a meager attempt to cosmetically refresh the design to garner new interest. Why? Because the gun they build, and have built for decades now, WORKS. Not for every single person out there (some old gun guys with a fetish for wood and steel, or preconceived ideas about "grip angle," may turn up their noses until someone hammers the last nail into their final resting place) but for an ever-increasing population of new shooters with purely practical aims and no worn-in preferences, a Glock just flat out WORKS.
(As does an xD. As does an M&P. Because they're 99% the same thing.)
So, what was it Glock was SUPPOSED to introduce to the market? And why? How superficial and fickle are we? We demand something NEW? When what we have works better than we have the ability to capitalize on. If I'm a financier to Glock, yes I could make the argument that we need to put out new products to harvest as much cash as possible from the market always seeking for new ways to spend money -- but financiers don't care a whit about whether a product offers a functional improvement. They only care about stirring market "buzz" that sucks money into the accounts.
With all the endless barrage of "new" junk that shooters are pounded with every month in the gun rags, WE don't need to be upset that a company has an idea that really, really WORKS and they are willing to stick by it rather than paint it up, call it new, and charge us more for it.