I've got no disagreements with this. Lack of steady development and increased competition in the genre are the two main contributing factors. But these are/were very obvious, so the constant questions of "where are all the peoples?" is extremely disingenuous because the people posing the questions are just trying to bait the responses they want out of people.
See, that's cult thinking.
The question "Where are all the people at?" is meant as a challenge to the people who want to delusional claim that graphics don't matter, that AH does everything better than everyone else, that the subscription doesn't matter it's only $0.50 a day, that essentially AH has nothing to learn from any other sim.
If all that were true, if the market agreed with that, there should be a lot more players in the arena. If their delusional wishful thinking is true, then that begs the question, OK,
"Where are all the people at?"
Apparently the market doesn't agree with a lot of peoples assessment.