As a developer of a hardware project [1] that was funded on Kickstarter last year, I have to say that the real value is not the easily-reproduced payment infrastructure, but the eyeballs. A significant portion of our backers found the project through Kickstarter -- that's where people browse looking for something to spend money on.
I'm disappointed by Kickstarter's latest changes, however. What we did wouldn't be possible under the new rules.
This is a fascinating question. We optimized our design to be a "simpler" Kickstarter - however, I don't believe the changes were material enough to really shift things more that 5-10% in either direction.
While we did lose out on the internal momentum that Kickstarter brings to projects, most of the early press missed that fact that we weren't on Kickstarter. Some actually reported us as a Kickstarter project.
I'm disappointed by Kickstarter's latest changes, however. What we did wouldn't be possible under the new rules.
[1] http://www.nonolithlabs.com/cee/