Quote - Dude! Seriously?

Poser won't play ball and become Studio Jr. So DAZ decides to give out Studio for free. How can they NOT think that it would undermine Poser?

Back on subject.......

I would say that Dawn is in a holding pattern for 2 reasons:

1.  The P9+ requirement.  As I have pointed out earlier, the Poser/DS user base is notoriously cheap.  I simply can't take seriously a customer saying that they can't scrape together $29.95 for a copy of P9, when it was on sale a month or so ago.  If they are too cheap for that, they are more than likely too cheap to actually buy content.  The same applies to the "I can't afford a new computer."  Please.  Poser will run on any computer made in the last decade.  If you can't afford this, then this hobby isn't for you.  Sorry, but that is how it is.

2.  Vendor skill sets or lack thereof.  Most character creators are "dial-spinners".  Most of the character creators simply do not have the skills or software to custom morph a figure.  As such, they are limited to the starter morphs.  The same applies to clothing creators.  A lot of vendors don't move beyond making skin tight clothing because they don't have the skills to do so.  It is what it is.

Things that aren't helping Dawn:

1.  Overpromising, underdelivering.  This should not surprise anyone - Kondris was just as bad at overpromising and underdelivering when he was running marketing at DAZ as he is at Hivewire3d.  It shouldn't surpise anyone that this kind of stupidity followed him.

2.  Vendor Reluctance.  A lot of vendors have made product for a niche figure in the past that went nowhere.  Because of this, they have made the decision not to make products for any figure that that hasn't already reached critical mass.  Since most of them have taken that approach, new figures never reach critical mass.  A chicken and egg problem that leads us to:

3.**  End user reluctance. ** End users don't see a lot of new product for a new figure due to issue 2, therefore they don't invest in a new figure, which continues the downward spiral. 

A corollary of this is the reluctance to embrace products that have been added to the Poser ecosystem.  There are a lot of "force multipliers" available for Poser, but few actually take advantage of them.  As an example, those of us who have invested in clothing conversion tools are less likely to purchase new clothing. 

Why should I spend $14.95 for a Dawn outfit when I can run it though WW or Xdresser or the Fitting Room, or a combination of both? 

I am well aware that there are people that aren't all that impressed with them, but quite frankly, I suspect that they haven't actually used them all that much.

Sturgeon's Law.  It applies to Poser/DS content creation just like it does everything else.

 

And 1 last thing......

Daz isn't giving away DS4A because they want to "undermine" Poser.  DAZ is first and formost a content brokerage.  They depend on content sales, not software sales (Which is a good thing considering their "expertise" in that area.  Can you tell that I have bought all of their software?)  The vendors apparently weren't willing to spend $130+ on the Content Creation Tools that didn't come with any documentation. 

From the release of DS4 to the start of March Madness (not quite 6 months), there were less than 300 items released for genesis - that is everything, including counting bundles as separate items. I took the time to track products as they were released.

Products for genesis didn't really start to hit the DS storefront until the "Free for a limited time" DS4P hit (and then DAZ had to refund a lot of money to people who had bought the product).  Which will end up being a long-term bleeding ulcer to DAZ's bottom line - they were expecting to make money off sales of DS4.  I don't see the user base paying for DS5 anymore than they were willing to pay for DS4