Among all AR15 manufacturer, Colt is the only one have NPC bolt - individual magnetic particle inspected bolt; and only one have individual high pressure tested and magnetic particle inspected barrel. Most other manufacturer only do those QC with 1/50 or 1/100. Myself consider that is better QC.
About who is the original manufacturer for AR15, I already explained in the previous post.
I've been to the LMT factory and watched them individually test their bolts and barrels... both MP and HPT is done to
ALL OF THEIR L7D3 and L7A3 bolts and not just 1 out of 50 or 1 out of 100 as you stated above... same for their barrels.
I believe there are a few other companies that MPI and HPT 100% of their bolts and barrels but I'll let others speak to that. The point is that your blanket statement that Colt is the ONLY company to do it is simply wrong.
As for pricing, it's not an issue of which rifle is "better" it's an issue of costs. Wholesale costs, import costs, transportation, handling, etc. dictate the eventual selling price of any product. If one manufacturer offers the dealer a 35% margin and another offers the dealer 10 to 15% margin then the selling prices of those two items may very well be skewed once they get to retail... especially here in Canada.
Let me explain it this way... Company A has an AR which has an MSRP of $1,499 US. Company B has an AR which has an MSRP of $1,299 US. Company A offers a 33% margin to their dealers (so dealer cost is $1,000) but Company B offers a 10% dealer margin (so dealer cost is $1,169.10. Before you laugh and say that's not possible, let me assure you that there are a number of AR manufacturers out there that offer dealers 10% to 15% margins on their products.
For a dealer the Company A product is saleable... in fact the dealer can even discount the retail pricing and offer sale pricing, etc... but the Company B product is a problem since the dealer simply can't stay in business handling their rifle at 10% gross margins. Just getting the rifle from the manufacturer to the dealer will eat away at some of that margin (shipping cost) and the cost to take a credit card on the sale would eat up most of the balance of the "profit" so the dealer has to make a choice... either refuse to carry the product or increase the retail pricing in order to have a margin they can stay in business with.
This is a pretty simplistic explanation... lots of other factors involved... but as you can see the pricing is a function of the costs more than anything else. Over the years there were a lot of really neat products that we decided not to carry simply because the manufacturer's pricing structure was such that we simply couldn't stay in business on the margins they offered and if we had set the product pricing high enough to cover our costs the product would not have been competitive in the marketplace.