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But let me give you one little correction. You said:

"Oh, and don't outsource it this time either. The RDNA guys are okay, but you need that shit done in-house, by a full-time employee or three."

Ummm - they have to outsource it. The in-house resource is what got us Alyson and Ryan. Either they outsource, or they fire somebody. And nobody at RDNA is doing it - err - I mean the person doing outsourced work is not an RDNA employee, if that's what you meant. Otherwise - I don't even know what "RDNA guys" means.

 

Fair 'nuff on who did/didn't it (I probably picked the wrong version), but the point still remains. And no, you (Poser team, that is) do not have to outsource it. Your long-term survival depends on you not outsourcing it.

I grok the budget angle. Everyone's budget sucks (even in my job, and I work with large banks, FFS). However, on a strategic level, you have got to get some mesh mastering brains in-house and put at least half of your overall focus on the figures. The cost of outsourcing a figure that is equivalent to or better than what you-know-who puts out, is going to cost you a hell of a lot more than if you just hired a couple of really good people.  

I've seen top-quality meshes being sold. I watched the Intel Corporation shell out way north of $5k just for a basic head. It had just over 10k all-quad polys, and came with texture maps, shaders, normal maps, Max rigging, and displacement maps. It was about as morphable as a brick, and was set with one personality (albeit based directly on a real person.) Now imagine what it would cost for a top-end mesh that is built to be flexible and still not look like shit.

Until you do get up a superior set of meshes, you're going to be hostage to the tender mercies of you-know-who, and the recent release of you-know-what has severed that long-term lifeline rather neatly. This leaves you guys with a choice - get better default figures, or slowly fade into oblivion - you pick. I can't do that for you.

I know, I know... so let's get those arguments out of the way right now:

Sure, Poser can skate by for a good distance of time on Vicky/Mike 4, but eventually people are going to start looking at the shiny new figures that keep coming out over there, and well eventually want that more than what they can get from or for Poser. Even worse, someday soon, folks won't be able to download Vicky4 from the source - so then what?  If all you have to offer figure-wise on your part are warmed-over default meshes that are about as flexible as concrete, people are going to get tired of it awful quicky.

Sure, there are some promising figures coming out of the community (Antonia definitely comes to mind). But seriously, relying on volunteer efforts to remain solvent over the long-term isn't exactly what one would call a sane business decision. 

What I'm trying to say is, not even half of what sells poser is the feature-set. The meshes are what makes up more than half of the sale. It's time to take a good hard look at making that half work for you, instead of hoping that someone else does it.