Relevant Steve Jobs quote: "Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple."
So yes, it is hard to make the simple version. You have to have a very good understanding of what the user wants out of your product. Until you have this clarity, every feature seems important. Once you have this clarity you understand what the important features are. You make those features more prominent by giving them prime real estate, then tuck away the less important features in a less visible place. Simple things should be simple. Complex things only need to be possible.
It can get very complicated when you've built an audience where you have 10 segments that think their 10% of the use case is very important and you can only focus on a couple of segments at a time!
So yes, it is hard to make the simple version. You have to have a very good understanding of what the user wants out of your product. Until you have this clarity, every feature seems important. Once you have this clarity you understand what the important features are. You make those features more prominent by giving them prime real estate, then tuck away the less important features in a less visible place. Simple things should be simple. Complex things only need to be possible.