First, for at least the last 10 or 15 years there have always been receivers available with more features than processors could offer. It's the nature of the R&D process. The attractions for processors were mostly related to sound quality - partly because of the benefits resulting from the removal of power amps from the chassis and partly because designers often invested more effort into sound quality on processors. I think that's still true today.

Second, I don't see anything in Peter's post that suggests the Model 978 will be killed by this. All I see is a (reasonable) suggestion that the quake and tsunami may delay availability of some chips. D&M Holding announced this morning that they were closing one of their Japanese plants for at least a week to make repairs to it, which will impact both Denon and Marantz. Once it comes back online, I'm sure there are also going to be issues with delivering any goods that get built. Any components in the Model 978 that are made by factories in Japan may be hard to get, and if the factory building the Model 978 doesn't have enough on hand right now to build a full production run (and assuming any such stockpile could avoid being poached for other production while shortages exist) then it's entirely possible that production will have to wait until those chips are available again.