Has the buzz for Java ever come from Hot New Features? As I recall that buzz was 80% marketing budget from Sun then Oracle, the stability of the platform and the ready availability of programmers.

If anyone ever picked Java for its features, their judgement should be questioned. The thinking might well withstand that questioning, but it isn't an obvious choice on the basis of features. I mean, Java itself is an obvious choice - but not because of its features. You can show me languages with much better feature-sets and I'll nod, agree then recommend Java for production use. The features just aren't the selling point.