Personally I would be hesitant to conclude that the plug-in integration eats from other topics. That’s architectural changes…whole other skills set then creating an efx model.
Looks like it's essentially both because the architecture is changing (PCOM firmwares) to suit each plugin batch, but then each batch is also getting rebuilt for running in a modular/block fashion on QC.
I don't think it's merely coincidental that new QC-native content development has practically dried up (oooooh, circular delay!) as this plugin effort has ramped up.