Quote - > Quote - That could very well just be marketing. 

Yes, and from that they're marketing the feature set to Professional Content Developers. It doesn't mean other's aren't going to use it (ie Power Users that don't create content for others), but that's how the official marketing was set up.

 

Quote - In any case, you are right in observing that we're not seeing vendors offering much multi-figure support (except for texture/character sets). But that's nothing new. Perhaps there's a reluctance to use any sort of "automated" conversion utility in a commerical product where the expectation of the market is that everything be "hand crafted"? Perhaps they don't see the point of taking the extra effort to convert something for people who can buy the software themselves and do it? Perhaps not that many vendors have even bought the latest version of Poser?

It's not reluctance; to understand you have to figure that a vendor will spend weeks or months on something: building, textures, morphs, making sure it moves and functions properly for that figure. They're seeing the same dress or figure day after day after day after day. By the time they get to the end and ready to submit to a store, the vendor generally is tired of looking at that project and ready for something new to work on. When they use tools, they want them to increase their productivity to finish a project, not set it up do to it again. So you'll people asking for the same product for X figure and generally the vendor has moved on to something else so you almost never see a vendor make an outfit for another figure. Making a tool to help make the outfit for another figure holds no value if it's not economically feasible to do so; even if they did, they'll still have to go through another round of testing, promos, etc and run the chance of not recouping their investment  for that work if it only sells 10 copies. Vendors generally want tools to increase productivity in bringing that one project to market so offering a tool like this won't help them accomplish that goal.

What do you consider economically feasible and how do you figure it out?  I don't think most vendors do try to figure it out. They may make something for a figure (just for arguments sake say Miki 4) and they make the same outfit for another figure (Roxie). The outfit for Miki 4 sells as expected, but the one for Roxie doesn't. So the vendor assumes that  things for Roxie don't sell well. The problem with that argument is that it's almost a self fullfilling argument. People don't expect to see anything for Roxie so they're not looking. And if they're not looking they won't buy. You have to give the figure time to prove itself. Something most vendors don't really want to do.