I’m glad someone else than me said it. Only been using Rhino for a few years, but the impression I get is that if McNeel never hired David Rutten, they would have gone out of business a long time ago. Since MOI was mentioned, which is made by Michael Gibson who I believe was involved with the geometric kernel in both Alias and Rhino, and he chose to not develop another one for MOI, it’s pretty telling how difficult it is…
…anyway, at the risk of invoking Cunningham’s Law, I’m hoping that McNeel will prove us wrong with actions rather than words (though as someone else mentioned, they’ve been waiting 20 years). 
(Not to derail the thread, I’m still worried that the same will happen to Xnurbs as they’re basically courting Siemens, even though Siemens is luckily ignoring them for now.) 
However, Plasticity is made for artists and not manufacturing, so I think it’s a case of VCs dipping their toes in that water, since traditionally Nurbs have seen little use by that profession and they’re checking if they can squeeze a tiny little bit of growth out of that area.