The current system where every user is a network node is not the intended configuration for large scale. That would be like every Usenet user runs their own NNTP server. The design supports letting users just be users. The more burden it is to run a node, the fewer nodes there will be. Those few nodes will be big server farms.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=532.msg6306#msg6306thats the true path bitcoin was meant to take.
core is abandoning this idea and banking on unproven untested, and non existing technology to scale bitcoin.
if they want to do such a radical shift from the original vision let them start an altcoin.