Cant fault you on your logic here, lots of unanswered questions, in particular I have in relation to what happened days/weeks after Protean was dropped into Bunbury harbor.
Ever since that point in time, everything seemed to change - personnel, future company objectives, measurement and verification methodology, heck - even the basic configuration of the buoys - now formatted in a "pod" array with a centralized PTO unit, as opposed to Sean's hexagonal clustering.
That said, some form of evolution in design was (IMO) inevitable - only have a look at other WEC developers locally to see what challenges there are in a marine environment. (Plus respecting some basic laws of physics
)
One plus though - renewables ARE the future for clean energy on this planet - so having a crack at several different forms given global trends isn't a flawed approach - just depends how you manage and exploit the trend.
GLTA