clsteve opened this issue on Nov 15, 2007 · 354 posts
aeilkema posted Fri, 16 November 2007 at 2:33 AM
The real question....... is poser worth even pouring more resources, time and effort into. A team worked on P7 and even if my estimate of 6000 may be to low for most of you, the for sure didn't sell more then 15,000 copies (otherwise the total revenue figure isn't correct at all).
One has to ask if selling 5,000-15,000 copies of an application is worth a year long work. Poser 7 hasn't been developed by one man, but by a team. When it comes to software, selling 15,000 copies may sound a lot, but looking at a worldwide scale, it's actually very little.
I've been working on software for years and selling less then 20,000 copies of an application only means one thing..... scrap it. I know quite a number of independent software developers with a little budget, who on their own create 3D related applications that sell more then 50,000+ copies easily and yet a corporation with much more resources and a development team, cannot by far reach that number. I'm sure Smith Micro will be asking the same questions.
I've been to their website and I miss to see the potential there. All I see is applications (with the exception of Stuffit) that are very low priced and some of them were famous ones, but have been replaced by other applications. With all due respect to Poser, but it fits right in with the rest of Smith Micro's products. Obscure, outdated and once very famous, failling to attract customers, due to being replaced by other applications.
There's one good thing though..... we all may end up getting Poser 7 Pro dirt cheap, I don't see them selling it for $500 or so, since that doesn't fit in with the rest of their pricing. I wouldn't be suprised if Poser Pro would drop to $250 or below and Poser 7 (full) to $49-$99 or so. That would fit in well with their pricing scheme.
You may want to read up some more on Smith Micro and their strategies:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=smsi
At any rate, SMSI doesn't seem to be the compnay that will make Poser soar again. I see potential when it comes to pricing for customers, but I do not see much potential when it comes to further enhancements and new innovations in Poser at all. They're first going to try to generate a good number of sales with all the applications acquired and then they're going to decide if it's worth further development or not. If it didn't generate enough sales, developments will be minor and the application will be added to their list of obscure ancient applications, sold dirt cheap. If they succeed in marketing Poser well, then there's hope for Poser. Let's hope they don't market Poser as poorly as E-F has done over the years.
Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722
Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(
Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk