If I was SM, I'd be working on a team to push the envelope to produce the quality content necessary to act as a jump-starter for the marketplace and I'd run the marketing department over-time, every week, with content-promotion and content-creation partnerships with quality vendors who push the limits of new platform features. New features are great, but they're meaningless if there aren't any products that use them.Agreed. However having such a structure in place is not cheap and takes a while to get working right. Yes there might not be any short term financial gain, but in the long run it can definitely pay off. You as a company need to show seriousness in supporting a feature or platform as well as supporting it with content, provided it's viable of course. Others will follow if you set an example.

You cannot expect others to invest in something if you the creator are not willing to do so yourself. Same applies for figures. The whole "here is a new toy, have fun" mentality doesn't work anymore from a financial standpoint. You need to invest in it if others are to invest in you. Which is why I wonder how this Cycles system is going to work. Is SM just going to release it and expect people to do things themselves, or are they going to provide users with Shaders, lights etc. Do they have content developers providing those things as well? Time will tell. If not, I doubt the casual user will be that interested if it means more work on their behalf to use the new engine.

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