The blade business will always be pushing the edge so to speak, in the search for the "latest greatest." Because they can afford it, because they are looking for that last little tweak on the marketing side of things. Why not try all these things? The information adds to the general pool of knowledge, but the problem is that a good many very good steels get cast aside and never developed to their full potential because they are now has-beens, usually in about six months. It's an intensely competitive world where none of this really has to happen, but it does because human beings are competitive.

If you really consider the history of iron and steel, a lot of acceptably adequate to more than adequate blades were made from very ordinary materials, using very ordinary methods for a lot longer than our generation has seen micro structural and alloy development in its lifetime. For the most part, we have abandoned perfectly good steels like 12C27 (13C26 because they don't make 12C27 any more) or AEB-L (pretty much the same recipe from two different steel giants), or O-1 or plain 10xx carbon steels, and have not pursued pushing those materials to their maximum because of the distraction of "the perfect, or some new thread on one of the blade forums."