Quote - The modular approach usually does end up costing more if you buy all the modules but the rationale is that you're not going to buy all of them.

actually, when i was using D|S, i quickly had to pay for a lot more than the cost of Poser for just a few plug-ins. D|S3 Advanced is an impressive improvement on the situation.

Quote - Most people, if apparent use is any indication would be well served with a core that included a basic raytrace renderer. I'd bundle dynamic hair and cloth in one module, the face room in another and an advanced render module as another.

this would kill all the products out there with advanced material features. it would put a barrier between average users and newly rendy renders.  raytraced reflections aren't so important until everyone wants to render the Silver Surfer.  if we had, say, glowing materials, i'm sure there would be a great demand for Iron Man styled glowing lights on armored suits.  most of the people not using something most of the time is very different than  most of the people can't use something at all. imho, this is apparent by the relative diffusion of innovation and in-depth knowledge in the Poser and D|S communities.

and i'm seeing more and more popular dynamic pieces in the market.  in your scenario, those merchant's income, which i was told was very steady and reliable, would drop to about nil.

Quote - The basic render engine would include a stripped down material room and would be able to utilize all shaders but nodes 'n such would be in the advanced module. That's roughly what Cinema 4D does.

i think it's important to note here that C4D is a professional program, and has a hobbyist market of pretty much zero to judge by both its marketing and the users i've seen online.  that  pricing scheme is designed, in general, for companies that won't think twice about dropping a few thousand for a feature that helps them meet deadlines.  even Vue has more of a professional and high end market than Poser.  Poser costs $250, and that's full price.  it's only $150 as an upgrade, and cheaper on sale.  either your "base" gets a similar price, or i can't see how it would be worth it to pay developers to work on a stripped down version of Poser.  a lot of advances have been made in just the area you're suggesting as a base, and a lot of older features have remained in the areas you're suggesting they make "advanced."  add to development the cost of maintaining and supporting all these different versions, and i think it's pretty quickly not cost efficient to do.

Poser Artist already flopped.  even D|S use has advanced (pardon the pun, couldn't think of a better word) with the release of their all-in-one solution.  one of the many reasons i dropped it was that there was practically no information about and only 2 or 3 freebies for the plugins i paid so much for.  it just didn't make sense to keep investing more money and more time to use D|S than Poser.  now, with D|S 3 Advanced, i see more and more products made for advanced features for D|S.  but when everything was entirely piecemeal, as far as i can tell, it just wasn't financially viable for merchants to make anything for any of the plugins. 

Quote - From an economic standpoint, if you can get people to pay for features they'll never use, it helps to subsidize those features for the people who do.

to say people "never use" features doesn't really work when most Poser users are almost completely dependent on content creators.  users will use whatever merchants make that looks good, is easy to use, and gets promoted.  as i always say, look at how incredibly popular corvas' glamorous gowns were.  very, very, basic dynamic gowns with pretty much no features. to judge by newsletters, they sold like hotcakes. 

Quote - A lower end version might be better for many users but it would risk cannibalizing revenue needed to develop the more advanced features that are key to where they seem to want to position the application.

a lower end version might be better for many users right now assuming nothing advances in the market, no effects that require advanced features in the media become really popular, and none of the advanced features become more usable.  oh, and if the community as a whole doesn't benefit from innovations like, say EasyPose, super conforming, or other tricks for figures that only came about because no one had to pay extra to experiment and most could use those experiments..

the more barriers you add to innovation, the less innovation occurs.  why should anyone bother to pay for features if they can't buy any content using them?  and why should merchants make content no one can use?