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Not just that, the cost of the Curiosity Rover was $2.5B, whereas the cost of the two Mars Exploration Rovers was $850M. Given that they had already been designed and built, I am sure that they could have made at least a few more (with improvements) for less than Curiosity. Instruments could have been spread out on each, and they could have landed them at multiple places.
I would hope that there is a convincing argument against this approach, but I don't know of it.