I break for once my lurking because this discussion is interesting (and has nothing to do with 3D or Renderosity or whatever).

There is an important news about DAZ that apparently nobody noticed (like all important things). Please have a look at this thread on DAZ forums before reading on.

Now, let's do some work as intelligence analysts; let's ask ourselves: why? why DAZ is offering this sidegrade? why they are offering it now?

The first hypothesis is that they are getting ready to phase out Bryce and Hexagon.

Such move is completely sensible but it is also completely at odds with recent DAZ investments in Bryce (development outsourced to a consulting outfit) and on Hexagon (recent work on wxWidgets, the library underlying Hex, new release in beta).

Why gearing up to phase out programs which were developed just weeks ago? And why they did not so in the past? This change of strategy hints at some kind of dead branches pruning. In no way Bryce and Hexagon developments are going to create enough cashflow to repay for them. In the past revenues coming from other parts of DAZ business provided enough cash also for money sinkholes but apparently now the situation has changed and it has changed in the last few weeks.

What happened in the last few weeks? DS4 + Genesis. If we posit that sales of those items are way below DAZ management expectations (read pipe dreams) this action becomes understandable. There is less money than what was expected and therefore all money sinkholes must go. To prevent the foresable rage of users (already enough enraged) they are offering this side grade before the official plug pulling.

The second hypothesis is that they are not going to drop Bryce and Hexagon. Does this invalidate the above analysis? Interestingly not. In this case the sidegrade offer smells even more of lets-make-some-easy-quick-and-zero-cost-cash initiative. Again, something that does not have sense unless we posit that DS4/Genesis is not selling as expected.

In both cases we are left with the suspect that DS4/Genesis is not selling well. This conclusion is not outlandish: people are confronted with a new commercial strategy of higher prices, time limited offers and in general harsher commercial deals; in addition, there is a total puzzlment about Genesis in Poser. What is happening is what always happens in these cases: people halt their buy decision and wait for dust to settle down. The announcement of P9/2012 could not have come in a worse moment for DAZ and this tactic looks quite familiar because announcing new products to chill competitors sales was one of IBM deadly tricks.

DAZ started this war with a clear attempt at monopolizing the market and crushing Poser, SM has responded in a subtle yet quite harmful way. This conflict is going to be long and it is going to be bloody, especially for third parties. It can only end in two ways: either Poser goes down (sold by SM probably to DAZ and then promptly killed) or DAZ admits defeat, ports Genesis tech to Poser or backpedals on it (like it has silently done with Optitex dynamic clothes) and, in any case, stops its market grab attempt.

I don't know what will happen but the idea of living in DAZ controlled market, with new DAZ prices, with awfully buggy programs, DAZ track record of broken/unfullfilled promises, with things like the so called Content Management System (read placeholder for future DRM server) is not pleasant.

GIMP 2.7.4, Inkscape 0.48, Genetica 3.6 Basic, FilterForge 3 Professional, Blender 2.61, SketchUp 8, PoserPro 2012, Vue 10 Infinite, World Machine 2.3, GeoControl 2