Quote - This is an age-old problem - and not just in the world of 3D either. A lot of this was pointed out to DAZ prior to DS4 "release" IIRC, and the problem is that although it's a COMPLETELY VALID problem, no company can afford to avoid progress perpetually. With progress comes, among other things, incompatability.

That's why I can't play "Lode Runner" on my Windows XP machine - because it relied on Windows 3, and things have moved on since then. We all of us have a choice - to try to keep up, or to settle in at our chosen level.

The problem with that argument is that this happens in companies which have a monopoly, like Microsoft, or who have so much money that they just don't care about pissing off old customers. Several times I've heard vendors say how unprofitable the Poser market is, and how little money they make by doing 3D content, and how small the market is. This is why it makes no sense to split the user base like that. If I used to spend over $100 a month, and now I don't buy anything anymore, and just contract out what I want made, I can't imagine I'm the only one who've decided not to go with the latest tech, and that at the end of the month that's a ton of profit they are losing out on, just because they decided to go their own way.

When V4 appeared, right away there was an easy conversion from V4 back to V3 for clothing compatibility, and both figures worked in all the same programs. So it's certainly possible to progress and not break compatibility.