There will always be room for good new figures.

Coming back on polycount I remember a discussion from a while ago.

If you have work for a 100 people, you hire a 100 people.

If you have work for 100 people but hire a 1.000 people, 900 of them are on your pay-rol filling gaps but doing nothing.

Same thing for vertices. If you have actual 3D work for them? You need them. If you don't , you don't need them, they are just costing and make your work harder.

For a smooth figure like you are showing, where not a lot of 3D work is done by the mesh, it would be best to re-topo to around 10.000 before spending too much time on rigging and morphs. You are only increasing your own workload by staying with such a high poly-count.