If this was supposed to be an argument against using up the few extra pins for general purpose I/O, it's kind of weak a bit.

For emulators, the manufacturer can easily provide a couple of extra pins (the bondout versions are an extreme, but if you claim that a standard chip can multiplex internal signals on its pins when in debug mode, it means, it needs only one or two pins for driving the multiplex. So the chip can have two-three extra bond pads at almost no space penalty, normally unconnected to outer world; and for emulation version be packaged in a slightly bigger package, the space for emulators is usually not a big issue).

Of course I may be wrong, as I never designed nor manufactured mcus...

Jan Waclawek