Quote - $125 is the price of a toy and you get what you pay for.

True, but then again, if I buy DAZ Studio 3 (full license) I'll pay only $52.49. So the Poser 8 upgrade (assuming it still costs around $125) is over twice the price - will I get over twice the features for this?

That's why I said what I said about Poser marketing. Poser is late. Much like in the tortoise/hare fable, they have missed the train.
Each sensible user would rather get DAZ Studio, except a handful old dinosaurs who have got too much used to Poser that they are incapable of changing their habits; And that's not a market share.

Then, Poser can't be compared to Maya. Not by any stretch of imagination. Try modeling a simple object in Poser...
Last, corporate entities don't care about money. I know. You really don't mind spending 50 k for a project which will earn you 50 millions, so you can't really compare. The day a Poser render earns me $50 millions I won't mind buying the whole Poser team and sending them for a month's vacation to some tropical paradise. (You can quote me on that)