I doubt PBP will ever support anything in the 16/32 bit devices for the reasons posted above.
You can't write for them directly in assembler with MPLAB,
so how could a high level language that compiles to assembler be of any use?
I can't see a version of PBP ever existing that compiles BASIC to C code for these devices,
it would just be plain silly because they are both fairly high level languages, and C is far superior.

The apparent lack of awareness of exactly what is being missed out on is rather unfortunate.

On the other hand I think there will always be reasons to upgrade PBP to later versions.
The way it compiles your basic code to asm can always be improved upon,
and new features can always be added for the chips it does support.

I don't see much of a long term future for PBP with the way Microchip is going though.

Having just started with a dsPic, I can recommend Micrchip's C-30 compiler.
When the free trial expires, all you lose are the code optimisation features that reduce
the program memory consumed by your program, etc.
Not too bad for a free product that would otherwise cost close to $500.