The ESP32 didn't launch until we were already in market.

Still, I would politely suggest that you're underestimating the part where we needed low level access to a camera module that came with the RPi.

Even if the ESP32 had been out, we didn't have anyone handy to spend six months reverse engineering CMOS registers.

Everything is super easy a) in hindsight and b) when you're commenting on Hacker News and not actually doing it.