Random thoughts...

C4D's render engine is in it's 3rd iteration. When Daz got 3Delight, it had been around for years & already used in production. If you look at VRay, Vue, etc., they are all either the product of years of development by companies that are either dedicated to building render engines, or firms that have a goodly amount of development resources to devote to the process. FireFly (IIRC) was bought - from Pixels3D, the same way the hair, cloth and face rooms were bought. While it's certainly been around a while, I'm not sure that it's a good comparison, i.e. one developer, working for different companies, with perhaps different priorities, compared to the others. Maybe it's fatally flawed or behind the times, or maybe it just hasn't had the resources given to it in order to develop as fast as it might have.

The choices as I see them are:

1. Continue to develop FireFly, building on the current base.
2. Start from scratch, tailoring a new engine to the current material system.
3. Start over and develop a new materials system and render engine.
4. Buy/license a new engine and material system.

I don't pretend to know which would be best. A new material system (not just the interface) would involve a lot of pain for users & content creators. You could maintain backward compatibility but that has its costs - probably why they dropped the P4 engine. Trying to do anything with only one developer, even a great one, is probably going to take longer than people would like.

The GPU revolution seems well underway so any choice needs to take that into account. Even folks who render 'simple' scenes in terms of materials may want to render scenes with lots of figures and GPU acceleration would be welcome. With even browsers incorporating hardware acceleration these days, I'd say it's going to be a requirement for any credible 3D application.

I think the V5 issue is somewhat misstated here. I don't think that anyone doesn't want figures that pose more naturally; some simply balked at the idea of having to buy a new version of the program to get it.

As Aeilkema said, there are a lot of (sometimes conflicting) priorities they have to look at. The release of Poser Debut seems to say that they're trying to hit all the marketing niches. Maybe that's good, maybe not. Poser has been lucky to have only one real competitor, but having that competitor being your 'frenemy' certainly complicates matters.

Whatever they come up with, I gotta see skin before I'm impressed. It's all about Vicky. I really don't care if the temple is the photo-spitting image of Mayan architecture if she doesn't look luscious - YMMV :-)

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