Quote - > Quote -  The 'Pro' appellation has no meaning anymore; Vue 'Pro' was nothing of the sort; it was a stepping stone to the version that proved itself capable of finding a home in a production pipeline, Vue Infinite (and if ILM uses it, it qualifies as 'professional'). Poser 'Pro' isn't near being used in a pipeline for more than previs or poor man's animation...

Exactly! Poser Pro doesn't have 'PRO' type features, which is why I'm baffled that it's target audience seems to be professional level 3D.
Most people hoping for Poser 8 ended up buying Poser Pro. Now Poser 8's sales are going to suffer because of it... and they didn't bring very many new, little higher end, users in the fold.

Having Vue and Cararra in addition to Poser, I'm trying to figure out why on earth I would be interested in Poser Pro.

Which is really what its all about.  Look, Poser Pro is a decent application, probably not worth the upgrade price for most but on the whole a good step up from Poser 7.  However, it is not going to have professional graphics people flocking too it from other applications, and its certainly not going to be picking up a lot of the new hobbiests out there at $500 a shot.  They have more or less conceded the entire hobbiest market by pricing themselves right out of the running.

So what happens now?  Sure, some of us will doubtless pay for the upgrade to Pro, and they might get a couple of folks who buy copies to integrate with higher end apps like Maya, 3ds max or cinema 4d - but they are not going to magically create this vast market of 3d pro's clamouring for there product.

So then what?  As a consequence of fewer new Poser users, the poser content community starts to suffer.  Fewer dollars to go around spent on content, content getsa  lot more competitive and prices drop there.  Better artists start leaving to create content for other programs where they can make more money.  Quality overall drops and content prices suffer even further.  Vicious cycle.

As Poser content declines, so declines Poser - since lets be honest here, it's availability of reasonably priced content that is Posers strongest selling point.  So either Smith Micro drops its prices out of the nosebleed section and tries to regain some market share in the hobbiest market, or they did what efrontier did and they try to sell the app to someone else and walk away.

Either way Poser suffers for SM's miscalculation of there market, only question is how bad.  I'm hoping it won't be too bad, fortunately Poser does have the advantages of strong entrenched market and a lot of great users who make it such a strong market.   But they won't wait around forever, if SM doesn't keep up on development and get it's pricing structure squared away, eventually they two will start seeking greener pastures.

I'd really hate to see that happen.  I get a lot of use out of Poser and I'd really like for the app continue to be developed and improved, but sadly I see Smith Micro's latest marketing ploy being about as welcome as a coyote at a road runner convention.  I just hope they don't do serious damage to the marketplace and to the application development cycle before this is all said and done.  I've seen apps that were every bit as popular as Poser is now die over miscalculations like this one.

-Never fear, RenderDog is near!  Oh wait, is that a chew toy?  Yup. ok, nevermind.. go back to fearing...