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There will always be some people who go that way. But others won't. If you read the feature list and add the price for the plugins you need to do what you want, the calculation is different. And, by the way, the figures which are included it Poser are usable as well. With the actual Version you get the G2 figures, Alyson and Ryan, Posette and Dork, James and Jessy, some Toons - with clothes, textures and hair. Yes, they are neither Genesis nor V4, but they are still usable.

So I tend to disagree that Poser is too expensive. Of course, there will be people who start with Studio and stick with it just because the base version is free, but it's not quite as easy as that, at least not for me.

 

For what Poser actually does, and for someone who has a metric buttload of content,  I'm not saying it's too expensive. Once you are into the hobby, and want a decent app that goes beyond the absolute basics, sure, it can be a good investment (hell, I still buy the thing every other version or so). 

OTOH, I'm looking at it from the newbie's POV. The guy who, especially in this economy, doesn't have 2.5 C-Notes to toss around on a whim.

Incidentally, that newbie is also the guy who also gets told by the CG pros (that is, the ones who get paid to do this stuff for a living) that if he wants to get serious in the CG industry, should skip Poser anyway and start with Blender (which is free), then work up to Maya, Max, Modo... 

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Quote - While you have a small percentage of people who say they use both apps 
any read of the D.A.Z. forum shows that the great majority of DS users never used poser.
Which tends  to confirm My suspicion that D.A.Z. has no interest in getting poser users to switch to Studio but instead is trying to get Artists from "other" fields to get into  DS.

 

...and therein lies the point. Their big thing is to get new users to use their product and then buy the goods to go with it. They present a very low threshold to doing that, which eases the new user into spending money and establishing loyalty. 

Smith Micro on the other hand has a somewhat high threshold - the $250 initial cost. Is it worth it? To someone who loves and uses the thing, the answer will of course be "yes". OTOH, to someone who has never used it before, things come under greater scrutiny, and that initial purchase is going to be put off. This becomes doubly true when the decision is to spend $250 (then learn the new app), or buy a plugin that does pretty much the same thing, or just find a free way to do it and buy more content. 

The other thing is the ecosystem. The reason that Apple domainates with the iPhone and iPad is, among other reasons, the ecosystem. Everything is right there. You don't have to go looking for stores and sites (though you can if you want) - everything is already in one place. You get support from the staff, you get a ready pile of stuff from which to purchase, etc.  Purchases I've made 10 years ago there can still be re-downloaded at any time I happen to need them. NYW? No problem. Michael 2.0 or Aiko 1.0? Yup, I can re-download those. 

With Poser's ecsystem, it's more like Apple's competition - You have to go to some other site to buy your stuff if you can find it - Content Paradise, here, RDNA, etc etc. Quality varies and it's caveat emptor all the way. There's also the relatively transient nature of these other sites (see also PoserPros, 3DCommune, Thralldom, etc). I have a metric ton of stuff from these sites, but could never replace anything I lose that isn't scrupulously backed-up. TBH, there are many puchases I've made here that I can no longer get a copy of, at any price. 

I'm not pointing these things out just to stroke the ol' e-peen, folks... These are viable business reasons, and people coming into this hobby are seeing these things, and making their buying decisions on them.