nimby,
Good questions! In turn:
1) You have sharp eyes. I snatched that photo from a Bell web site, it must be an old one, but it was official at one time. Here is a pair I found just now with two different logos, note it is the same shot, probably a few minutes earlier (camera angle identical) it is surely Bell who used the photoshop on the logo:
http://www.mecaer.it/product/flight/ba609.shtml
and here is the one I used, still on the net, at the Dowty web site!
http://www.messier-dowty.com/programs/fr_BA609.asp
2) the disk loading is really not an argument, it is a physical fact, in that higher disk loading means more power needed for the same lift/weight. That being said, the X2 has fairly low disk loading, in tune with a normal single rotor helicopter, so its power needs are roughly the same. The older ABC compared quite favorably to normal helos, but it was slightly heavier than a very good single rotor helo, about 5% empty weight. This robbed payload a bit, so speed costs there, as well, just not as much.
3) Those words are all true, today as they were a few years ago. The question is only that of what speed you want, and what you want to pay for it. If "normal" helicopter speeds were considered, an ABC would be a non-starter, because you would earn 20% less wityh the machine, and your competitors would eat your lunch, or you would carry half the weapons load, and thus fail in your operational evals against a helicopter.
I am amused at the discussions of configuration made here, and virtually everywhere else, that speak of the arrangements as geometries, with shapes and physical properties. Invariably the real choice is between the various designs draws down to three inexerable bits of data for any given design:
First = From a hover takeoff, what is the payload?
Second = What is the cost of the vehicle to purchase and to operate? (cost is almost purely determined by the empty weight, the engine power and the number of finely machined (critical) parts).
A more distant Third = What speed does it provide in cruise?
If one lays it out, the realization is that to move a given number of pounds or people, the 250 knots for a tilt rotor costs the owner between 2 and 4 times what the 150 knots of a single rotor helicopter does (half the payload at some increase in the purchase price). For an X2, the data might project that for 230 knots of cruise (perhaps more, probably not less) the multiplier might be between 20% to 50% more cost.
Only when the real price of the 609 is known, and of the X2 (should it get that far) will this be hard fact and not conjecture. If one simply weighs the empty aircraft, and applies a factor for engine horsepower (which sizes transmissions and rotors and shafts) the 609 probably falls somewhere above the Black Hawk in price (same weight, more complexity for the critical parts, but more efficient Bell manufacturing costs.) For X2, 5% more weight, and a few more critical items put it in between.