I wonder if Motorola lost faith in the 68k because of a diminishing number of signature customers.
When Apple went for the PowerPC instead of continuing on to the 68060, the remaining audiences for high-end 68k were not going to move anywhere the same numbers.
If Commodore and Atari had remained competitive longer, there might have been more demand (and conversely, enough R&D effort to tide 68k over until we got to modern "everything is RISC after the decode stages" design paradigms.
When Apple went for the PowerPC instead of continuing on to the 68060, the remaining audiences for high-end 68k were not going to move anywhere the same numbers.
If Commodore and Atari had remained competitive longer, there might have been more demand (and conversely, enough R&D effort to tide 68k over until we got to modern "everything is RISC after the decode stages" design paradigms.