Just to remind what a big deal physical tooling and wiring was...
... the Mostek 6502 chip intentionally had the same electrical pinout as the Motorola 6800, despite completely different design, instruction sets, and even endian-ness.
With 40-pin sockets, they were a commodity, not terribly more expensive than the same-width 24- or 28-pin sockets. (when 28-pin first came out, they were pricier than 40s, a problem we solved with a mitre box and a razor saw). However the larger (and wider) sockets were expensive enough for cost accountants to sit up and notice - they certainly cost more than a few latches (and their sockets).