Poser Pro 2014 is $499.99 at Smithmicro right now. Marveleous Designer is $549.99 Perpetual license for the Personal Advanced edition which allows commercial use. True they say "Major upgrades available at $274" but major upgrades are about every other year, just as with Poser. It has just been an upgrade that was free. So how do you make that ten  times more expensive?

Yes it works with tris but how does that matter? With the new zBrush people nowadays routinely retop several times during a workflow. zBrush is indispensable so that is no extra cost. And the latest MD3 can import obj quads and return the same vertex count, so you can use it both for morphs and for permanently changing the flow of your mesh.

Finally the MD Team HAS tried to cater for the hobbyist market. For a long time it cost only $199 and even $99 in a introductory offer. Although is is a perfect partner for Daz or Poser the interest was rather low (as all things new is in the Poser community I might add). So you can't blame them.