I haven't been around much the last few months cause I've felt like crap. And when I'm not feeling like crap I'm working on commissions and other projects to pay the bills. But I usually still lurk if only to keep up to date on what's going on, which has been nothing lately.

I don't think the diminishing forum activity has as much to do with debates or arguments as it does with competition. There have always been heated debates that spring up, on topics new and old, and it rarely had any affect on how much activity continued in the forums. But that was back when there was little to no competition with Poser, and that's not the case anymore. 

Poser's popularity has always been content-driven. So it only makes sense that without new, cutting-edge, quality content to compete with everything else that's available, its bound to diminish in popularity as people migrate over to where the new shinies are.

Where is the content that utilizes all of Posers newest features?  The way I see it, without some serious effort on SMs part to put resources into some major content development that rivals its competition, the silence around the various Poser forums is just going to continue to grow. The best they currently have to offer is Rex and Roxie. They've been out for nearly a year now, but SM's own site doesn't even offer much of anything in the way of content for them. 3 or 4 items? Business suits seems to be the only official content they've done. In a year. Nothing official for developers to use to make character sets, nothing. 

So yeah, pretty much I think that's why the two biggest Poser forums are mostly crickets chirping lately. And this isn't intended to start another debate, it's just an honest observation. Poser needs new content. Without it, its users go elsewhere.

 

~Shane