I've always regarded the default Poser figures as essentially throw-away figures, anyway.  So to me personally it's no big deal.  That's not to say that it might not matter to others -- but speaking for myself, adding another Jessi or whatever to the mix wouldn't be of any particular interest to me,anyway.

BTW - I don't have the time to read through this thread right now, so please indulge me if these points have been made by others previously.........

I see one of two possibilities at play here -- saying this with the full disclaimer that what I'm doing is engaging in wild speculation. and that I could be completely and totally wrong about this:

1.  Perhaps what they've done here is to tacitly admit to the fact that the DAZ line of figures are the default Poser figures.  All others (including those that come pre-loaded with the program) are also-rans, at best.  So from a purely business standpoint: why waste money & development time on producing yet another line of new figures (George & Martha, this time?) that won't be able to come close to matching the DAZ figure's built-in popularity, anyway?

OR:

2.  SM now regards their figure-content line as being separate from the Poser program itself.  That is to say: they can make more money by selling their line of unique figures -- and the content for them -- apart from the base program.  Not a bad marketing strategy on their part, if that's what's going on.  The potential downside being that there might be some forum complaints about the quality of the figures which come pre-loaded in Poser...........

If I'm doing Arc Viz, then these new default figures might come in handy.......in the background distance.

Something To Do At 3:00AM