Am I the only one who thinks the upgrade pricing/policy is messed up?

Poser 4 -> poser 8       $129
Poser 5 -> poser 8       $129
Poser 6 -> poser 8       $129
Poser 7 -> poser 8       $129
Poser Pro -> poser 8   $129

I've been using poser since 4, have upgraded 3 times and purchased full retail twice (since sales had the retail cheaper than the upgrade - smooth marketing).

After all that money and continued disappointment on features and stability I still have to pay full upgrade cost to "backgrade" to a non-pro track with the promise that the cost will be deducted when I move back over to the pro track that comes later?  That's cold.

Pro was pretty disappointing (on my monster 8 core mac pro, at least).  The rendering engine speed increase between p7 and pp was anemic.  The only feature I wanted was a rendering engine that would actually use the hardware in my single machine.  It would have been nice if it would use the other cores scattered around the house but it doesn't even take advantage of the 8 in the machine.  Content?  I buy or make content.  I wouldn't care if posert came with NO content.

I dunno, for me the pro line was a waste.  Especially the way they're treated as two different programs instead of feature sets of the same program.

Talk about non-professional...

Sorry, just venting.  I get so sick of all the software companies begging every few quarters for yet another upgrade, this time with some of the features you wanted 4 years ago, and some of the 8 year old bugs fixed.  And hey, it now supports state of the art technology from 5 years ago.  I no sooner buy Carrara 7 Pro when they come back with their hand out for Carrara 8.  Vue Infinite hasn't even begun to enter into my hobbiest workflow when the next version comes knocking for money.  My favorite is the "maintenance" scam.  Sorry, once I stopped using Microsoft products, I promised myself I'd never grab my ankles for another software company.

Poser 8: what poser 6 should have been.  I suppose, given the fact that every few years, poser is owned by a different company this is to be expected.  Brutal on whatever is left of the development team.  And at least they finally did fix the GUI.  8 years after everyone noticed it sucked.  Maybe that's what the "8" means?  Because if they didn't, Daz Studio Pro would have put the final nail in the coffin.  Of course, my DS pro costs less than the "upgrade" from Poser Pro to Poser 8.

Sigh.  I'm so glad I got out of that industry and back into real engineering where what we design and build doesn't suck and doesn't take nearly so long.  We'd be sued if it did.

PS: am I the only one who finds the term "pro" tired?  Yo, marketing guys.  Would you at least pretend to work?

I mean, My mac is "pro", my DS is "pro", my Poser is "pro".  Sounds like weak bragging.  "Sure I'm a professional.  how could i not be; everything I use has the work 'pro' in it."