And probably when there is interest about a Z8iii there will be a lot of posts of people trading up. Is there a logic based purely on on camera specs that decides what people buy, or do some swap and change depending on what is considered the "must have" at this particular hour of this day? Then post on internet forums...
Besides, who said that higher numbers = more emotive photography?
As far as the numbers go then 24MP out resolves a 5K retina screen so looking at complete images on a screen ther is no advantage from a higher MP camera. Similarly with prints, there is a base resolution of which there is little point in exceeding.
From a purely aesthetic and artistic viewpoint there is no truth in the reality of an object, the only truth resides in our memory. And our memory is attuned to the familiar, not the extraordinary. With sports action we perceive blur as speed and movement and a high resolution frozen moment as abstracted, or slightly weird. Is this because blur is the absolute truth of an object at speed, or because it is the way (memory) we have learnt to interpret the shortcomings of 35mm film photography? It's the higher res frozen shot that represents "truth" and yet it looks more abstracted to us, simply because it doesn't conform with how we expect photos to look.
The human mind is empirical by nature, not logical. So when we view and interpret an image there is no inherent truth contained in the object or the photo, we find that truth by comparing to our memory. It is well understood in art that if we abstract (or blur the edges of) reality then we make it more adaptable to our memory, if we show tha absolute truth then there is no room for interpretation. Our emotions and feelings are attached to memory, not the absolute truth of an object. CD and vinyl, is the debate really about the absolute truth of the sound?
It's not to say that high MP are pointless, indeed they are not. They have a look, feel and texture in print that is a result of resolution. And they represent an easily understood and numerical way to rank cameras in order, like 1,2,3,4... But as far as the difference they produce in images is concerned it is far less than our understanding of the relative difference in numbers suggests, (often it is next to nothing with normal digital viewing conditions), unless you start looking at images in an abstracted way to compare the differences, like zooming on detail and comparing crops on photo forums... And it also falls a long way short of explaining photography and the nature of images, much like equivalence it completely fails to explain why some images resonate and some do not.
I was thinking of a Z7 to replace the D600, but went for a Z5 because none of the specs generally used to compare cameras would actually make any real difference to my photography, but "NEW CAMERA!!" and "EVF" did.