While you're right, the difference in price isn't substantial, the point is the features aren't there. The original chipset was planned to integrate both USB 3.0 and SATA into the chip but Intel kept delaying it due to issues with implementation, thus offering a neutered chipset at a still all-too-high price.
The PCIE 3.0 is the biggie and really the only added bonus (I wouldn't consider quad channel nor chip support motherboard features but rather platform features independent of chipset), but PCIE 3.0 is being offered with Z77 and IVB, along with some Z68 boards being slotted with IVB chips.
The lack of SAS is what bugs me. It's supposed to be a workstation platform that offers server chips at reasonable prices yet lacks an essential feature of any server platform. I use 2x sata 6gb/s because I dual boot OSes and wanted 2 different SSDs but what if I'd wanted RAID? Or to use multiple SSDs for storage, bypassing HDDs? It's not unreasonable when you consider just how much the platform and in turn the chips themselves cost that someone would want to go that route.
It's a case of Intel being forced to rush and release the platform/chipset before it was ready because they were getting far too close to the Z77/IVB release. Hell, look at the chips themselves. Intel have recently started accepting RMAs for their C1 > C2 stepping screwup.
2011 was just handled really poorly