SL is seeing its revenue decreasing. They need more money from their committed users. But as you say, they'll see their revenue decreasing even faster now. I have been a long time content provider for SL, but since a few months I have switched to 3DXplorer. The reason for this is that the total cost of building worlds is much less, enabling more accessible worlds, both because I can make more worlds and build a mainstream business, but also because this Browser based, and download-free technology enables me building worlds which are totally imbedded into my customers home pages.