If they decide to collaborate with big poker network such as ggpoker, they have bigger chance to survive with the poker.
Betcoin and fortunejak or may betnomi, these 3 sites did try to have poker but all of them also failed although they have player base but I'm sure the number of active players are not as big as what we can see in Stake.
Your points are valid, but not all of those active players are interested in poker which is why it's still risky though Stake can definitely afford to take that risk considering how rich and popular they are.
What I find odd is that @Ahoy posted about it way back in May and there hasn't been a single update about it since then which makes me think that they probably abandoned those plans.
Yeah I also found it strange it is taking them such a long time.
But according to Eddie on stream they "want to do it right, that's why it takes time" .
Maybe they are too busy with all their kick stuff so stake and updates for it take a second seat.
But since they at least said some sort of update now, that they will start and test it at stake.us, I guess it is now that far in the future to see the final product. But do I know it? Sure not! With stake we never know!