Where will it end?

[I @ M]

It looks like Sony are now king of the apsc mega pickle crowd.

24.3 of em at 12fps.

[arthurking83]

With the end of the world!!

ie. basically it won't end.
For as long as the general public is adamant that their compact P&S camera needs more pickles, and that 14 million of them is still not enough on a sensor smaller than the average pinkie fingernail, the SLR manufacturers somehow find it important to fit into this psychology. If the teeny weeny compact has 14mega pickles inside such a compact body, how come this behemoth monster that's unwieldy to handle, annoying to store and fiddly to use only has 12Mp < or insert an alternative megapickle count here>
To the average Joe Blo, who has no idea on the limitations of physics, and doesn't really care, all they see is numbers, and not what those numbers do to the actual quality of the image.
If Sony has mastered the physical limitations of SNR on such a high photosite concentration, then all the better.
The current 16Mp sensor seems to do rather ok, irrespective of the fact that it's all in the software inherent in the camera, more so than a natural tendency for the sensor to produce higher quality images via lower SNR.

Time will tell if this sensor is going to cut it against the older stuff.

For the birders and pickle peeping macro freaks .... surely this must be a new paradise to look forward too!