To be fair to Valve though, Half-Life is their flagship, and as such it's always been used to push and introduce new technology and ideas. In Half-Life, it was scripted sequences in an FPS. In HL2, it was physics. In HL2:LC, it was HDR. In HL:A, it's VR. While the price tag of the latter is admittedly quite steep in comparison, they're still following their pattern previously established. Sucks for those of us heavily invested in the story of Half-Life, though.
Returning to the main point of the discussion, however, there's a big difference between Valve and Phoenix: Valve can sell Half-Life and Phoenix cannot sell TSL. It's the same point that's been made over and over again: TSL is, necessarily, always going to take a back seat to products and services that will help Phoenix pay its bills. TSL is a volunteer fan project, as it's always been, and Phoenix is first and foremost a business.
So I will wait, watch this page, and hope that there's another update in store for us at the end of the month.

I do agree that a yearly progress report would be great, even if there isn't a lot to say. It was very encouraging to see the blog post last year.