Quote - > Quote - Long story short, my point is simple, albeit likely to cause a ruckus, but so be it: it ain't DAZ' responsibility to do Smith Micro's job for them. 

Since when is it SM's job to follow DAZ?  When DAZ came up with the gray golum, they knew Poser couldn't use it, and they probably knew they would never, ever, come up with a bridge between the two programs.  Something that would partially work, yes, but full functionality with no problems, never. 

It's not SM's fault that DAZ came up with something incompatible, it's DAZ fault.  It's not SM's place to fix the kludge, it's DAZ place, and they're not doing it.  Sorry, take that argument to somewhere else, preferably someplace where the average iQ is 2. 

Daz has their format, SM has their own. For the longest time Daz has fully supported Poser formats and their inclusion of the DSON importer is only evidence that they are making an attempt at maintaining compatibility with Poser. As previously mentioned, SM were approached by Daz who offered their DSON freely, but SM turned down the offer. Now, SM figures have been ugly at best, hideous at worst. I think most of us can agree on that. With that said, the majority of people I've seen are still using Daz figures, whether it's Genesis through the DSON or poser-compatible Victoria 4. I highly doubt that SM are unaware of this, so the onus is on them to either provide a figure which people actually want to use or man up and provide better compatibility.

When most of your customers are using your competitors resources, the smart company provides for them rather than telling them to put up and shut up.

Why there are different files in the first place I'm unsure of. A little bird told me that Daz's more optimised format tends to load faster, though I only have a slightly older Poser Pro 2010 to judge that on so I can't say for it's the same for the newer releases. However, if they were to release two different formats for the same figure you would also need two formats for every clothing item and accessory. Some PA's simply don't own Poser to provide this, just as some PA's don't own Daz to make Daz specific materials.

The upside for Daz users is no matter what Poser throws out, DS can use it because it has maintained compatibility. SM's refusal to do likewise just reeks of foolish corporate elitism. The ball is in their court, but they just don't seem to care.

On topic: I'm not enthused about Victoria 6 either. I dislike the move back to individual figures and twice the number of purchases for no apparent reason. I'm very interested in the new Dawn figure though. Is there a link somewhere to find out more information, or is there very little of that to go around at the moment?