Yeah, if you're using the book for anything other than shelf decor, you'll want a HC. A 480-page SC will not last long in play...it curls and crumples too easily (or collapses like a dying star under its own weight) just sitting in a backpack.
People complain about RPG core book pricing, and I'll admit that I was one of those. But expensive core books are not new; it's the evolution of the market. The Iron Kingdoms RPG core book (released last year) had a cover price of $59.99 for a 360-page HC, as did its latest HC Kings, Nations, and Gods for a 384-page HC (released at Gen Con this year). Even the Pathfinder Core Rulebook sold for $49.99 for a 576-page HC in 2009, and Paizo sold a couple of moving pallets of those just at Gen Con 2009 (so they could probably count on a bit of economics of scale, plus they sell their core supplements for $40 each). Fantasy Flight routinely pushes their HC core books at $59.99 (Only War had 400 pages, Star Wars: Edge of the Empire had 448 pages).
In all cases, the production values have gone way up from the 1980s $20 B&W corebooks with line art. I wouldn't mind seeing a "minimalist edition" (with just the rules and no art) just to carry slightly less dead tree around at cons (or even in PDF to make them run faster on tablet PDF readers), but I don't think it's worth it for the company to publish.