"Something we've been discussion in other forums, is that poser as it even is now, has become very complex to use, and it's target market is supposedly beginners interested in cheap and esy 3d work." 

Well said. If you look at vue for example, you have an application which is accessible to the hobbyist or casual user, yet powerful enough for major Hollywood productions. It's great that Poser is incorporating more advanced features that power users can take advantage of but if the mass of users don't see any up side then it becomes difficult for them to justify upgrading, thus less money for more improvements. I think this would apply more to things like the render engine though. In my ignorance I assume that chnages in rigging would be pretty much transparent to the end user, they would just see better posing figures. I agree though that the backward compatibility would be essential. Seems like a big question would be if Daz and SM could agree on a new standard. Unless SM produced incredibly, wonderfully better posing figures that people also find "attractive," I don't see the pressure on Daz to go along.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken