IMO a big part of the reason poser is headed for an early-ish grave is precisely because it's so cheap. The poser userbase is so spoiled by the artificially low prices in the market, that they simply wont pay for the R&D and tech upgrades that poser requries. It would be different if poser was a mass market product and volume sales could make up for this, but poser is a niche in an already small CG market. So if poser does die, blame the people who cut off it's blood supply, namely 'us'.

As for D|S, i would point out that D|S loses to Poser in quantity, not quality. Every feature of D|S is at least as good and frequently better then the coss. feature of poser. Yes it costs more, but for it's pricing is quite justified in most cases. It does no good to save money on a cheap ass app, only to be saddled with crappy tools from the last decade that waste your time and require excessive workarounds for the simplest things. Eventually D|S will get to a point where it will be a true rival for highend apps, and then it's price will seem very small compared to what a typical high end app costs.