Is there a technical reason why 10.1 content cannot be made backward compatible to 9.x player? (Even on somewhat degraded presentation)

It completely degrades the the value of an "Adobe Flash compatible device" when there is a complete block for future contents when your device is not on the latest Flash version..

At the very least they gotta incorporate the flash version to the labeling, because the version turns out to be a very critical variable in this equation.