The hell you talking about? I've reached ROI on multiple miners that I purchased last year(think september/october).
It's all about making smart decisions vs making stupid ones...reinvest.
Compound interest is where the real money is made.
Every gambler knows
That the secret to survivin'
Is knowin' what to throw away
And knowin' what to keep
'Cause every hand's a winner
And every hand's a loser
And the best that you can hope for,
is to die in your sleep
Although people unwilling or incapable of running their own probability calculations won't necessarily be making a majority of smart decisions.
GPU's might be a better profit to electrical cost ratio, but they require a much higher initial buy in...and a little bit of technical skill to get the build off the ground. You can buy a "turnkey" asic for the same cost as a single decent GPU...and that isn't counting the additional hardware to make the GPU generate income.
As long as there are locations with free power...all mining devices have value.