From what I've gathered from different posts, the smart contracts can open up a lot of things for Hive.
Yes, they do. They open up the possibility of creating and managing fully automated accounts on Hive, which is probably a must for bigger businesses to become interested in Hive.
Holozing is really ramping up the hype, I hope the playable version comes out soon.
Not sure. They said pack sales will be in January, but maybe not. And probably from there to a playable version, it'll still be a while.