"Disastrous" is obviously a loaded term, and it can be debated, but from what I collect, the reasons are

- Dots. People don't understand it. Their presentation didn't explain it properly at all. Additionally, many people thought it's stupid, and that the cutesy mascots are dystopian.

- Voice mode didn't work in their presentation. The demo failed.

- 200$ plan goes 20x -> 10x usage. 500$ plan introduced, 25x usage. The contrast is stark.

- "Ultrafast": 8x pricing on subscription plan (6x API). That's 80$ input, 400$ output, 100$ cache write. Hello?! Additionally, since it generates 8x faster, it consumes your quota 8x faster. Per wall-clock minute, it's 64x more usage spend per minute of generating. People report that on the 500$ plan, their weekly usage is gone in 40-100 minutes.

- People believe gpt-6.1-sol was planned to be released as astra-minor, but OpenAI renamed it at the last possible time, because gpt-6-sol is a disaster (this I can get behind)