Quote - "I just think that the free part of Studio is just irrelevant given all the money - or time - you need to spend before getting anything decent out of it"

Well "decent" is a relative term
and Free is always relevant to get new customers "in the Door" so to speak
once inside they will decide how much "paid extras they wan to buy based on their consumer Discipline and your marketing prowess
Clearly DAZ has mastered the "marketing prowess" part

The regular  year round price of poser 9 will require  $250. before you can even install "Antonia" or whomever and start scrounging& waiting for some decent content with variety.
and that "3 GIGS" of poser content is not for "Antonia" and one look at Alyson & Ryan and IMHO any new customer wont care about the 3 GIGs of Content or SSS or IDL etc.

Cheers

I've been playing more with the Poser figures lately, and find several truths.  The first is, and I don't try to do nudes, that I'm clothing them, with dynamic cloth.  What the figure looks like under the cloth becomes irrelevant.  If I don't like the face, there's the face room.  Dynamic hair, I don't use much, but there have been times.  POser pro 2012 if anyone's interested in which version, which really doesn't matter that much here.  IDL, not something to snark at, it didn't take me too long to figure out that can make one tremendous difference in a render, especially considering I normally use only one point light source.  SSS, sometimes, and sometimes not.  It's there, it works, it can make a difference in some renders. 

Then there's an interface I can get along with, and it doesn't change that much from version to version, I'm pretty comfortable with it. 

But I think if there were any external factors in the change of heads, I would hope that one of them would be the DS interface has not been the same on any two consecutive releases, or, confusion reign supreme.  There are some features of the Genesis that could be interesting, but after playing with it for a little, the shortcomings become evident. 

No, Poser isn't free, but it is well supported, and most of what in DS is an additional module is included in the base Poser.  Dress the figures, work on the faces, most arguments against them disappear.  If the new head of DAZ changes that to make it more of an integrated program, DS has a chance of becoming a viable project.  As it is, sorry, it isn't yet.

The "I" in Doric is Silent.