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Since several of these questions relate to creating new fish, I can answer that one fairly quickly. If a fish uses the same movement algorithm as all the others (except the Lionfish), then it takes me one day to create it.
Actually distributing that fish to the users is where the problem comes in. Gone are the days when I could just create a fish, bump up the version number of the Aquarium, and post it on my own website for the fans to test. Nowadays, even the tiniest change has to be incorporated into over 25 versions of the Aquarium (regular English, widescreen English, Crystal Ford, Crystal Intel, Japanese widescreen, Clock, Mac OSX, Mac OS9, etc.etc.etc). Then it has to undergo days of QA testing for each version, then Prolific has to change many things on the SereneScreen website to cover all the bases (News, Download instructions, Customer Support, Q&A, etc.). Then 100,000 emails have to be sent to inform everyone on the mailing list of the new version. Then the website has to be braced up for an onslaught of several million downloads as all the users running the free version of the Aquarium descend on us. Then the CD manufacturing process has to be halted, and a new master has to be cut with the latest version, and stickers have to be made for the boxes which still have the old version informing the customers that they can download the new one. The stores will send back many copies since they will all want to display the new one. Extra Customer-service people will have to be hired to handle the increased load of questions about the new version.
So you can see why Prolific would want to wait until there are several major changes ready, as no one would want to go through all this more than once or twice a year.
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