One engineering problem is that the power envelope is kind of tight. While the RPi simply will not work with 5V@500mA, the BBB does. If you bump the frequency, your power supply needs shoot up and you start needing heat sinks.
It really feels like the Beaglebone Black got the engineering aspects correct. Shame that even hackers are suceptible to marketing.
At this point, being able to use the Beaglbone Black is practically a superpower for me as an engineer. I can buy it. My end customers can buy it. It's real Linux so my end customer can bang on it as required. It's documented, so I can generate the embedded drivers I need and document them.
I suspect that with the industrial etherenet built in, the BeaglePlay is about to take on some of that character.