Quote -
You know the answer to that better than I do, I know that for a fact.
Point is, what is it?

Yes, I likely do have something of a clue. It's not all about sex.

"Women" aren't a homogenous group with all the same ideas and tastes any more than "men" are. Neither are "Poser users" or "Daz users". So I can't speak to everyone. But I've made some observations. Content users seem to fall into a few broad categories:

-- Those who do pinups and erotic images and animations.

-- Those who do illustrations for comics and book covers and so on.

-- Those who are using 3D software as a tool for producing art in a more conventional sense.

-- Those who like to play with 3D software as a technical challenge.

-- Those who play with 3D software, collect content, and make renders as a sort of "social" hobby.

The first category is going to be primarily interested in the anatomical accuracy and attractiveness of their models and how well they bend. The sexual attractivess of the female models will be very important for straight men doing this kind of stuff, along with the accuracy of the genitals of both sexes. There are also plenty of women and gay men in this category, so appealing to their desires has some merit as well.

The second category is more interested in the ability to make different characters and to put them into convincing scenes. They need a lot of very varied content, from fantasy to sci fi to modern. They'd also like anatomically accurate models, but because the unclothed versions probably won't show up in their renders, it's just not as critical. They also need male content and lots of it. But appealing to their sexual desires isn't really going to get anywhere because they are either working for a client with very specific needs ("I want a picture of a WW2 draftee who lost his left leg, coming home to his horse ranch.") or they are telling a story.

The third category is very often interested in pushing the realism of the models and greatly desires anatomical accuracy, having little patiences for bad joints and bad bending. They don't need really demand attractive models because sex isn't necessarily a big part of the appeal to them. Anatomical realism is, even if photorealism isn't. Of course a large number of these folks are also very interested in toons and/or non-human figures, so there's an added dimension.

The fourth category needs something to build. It's their job (and perhaps their mission) to find the flaws in the models, in the software, and discover ways to fix them. Perfect realism combined with elegant methods of achieving it are the goals.

The fifth category is made up of people who populate the galleries and use them as a sort of social network. They show off their new purchases. They make renders that imitate popular movies or TV shows. Or they make seasonal renders as a sort of "greeting card".

I think you'll see that the first category is dominated by straight men, and the last by straight women. They make up a large, perhaps the largest, sector of the market, and you will never sell much male content to them for exactly the same reason that Ken never sold as well as Barbie.

What I am saying is that a lot of what drives content sales are the same things that drive sales in the toy aisles. Barbie dominates over everything. And V4 is Barbie.

If you want boys to play with dolls, you have to make dolls that appeal to boys. That's either going to be a hypersexualized Barbie (with proper "bits") OR an Action Man/ GI Joe type male.

If you look at CG sites other than this one, the users are mostly male, much of the stuff being produced is male oriented, and a substantial amount of that stuff is war, sci fi hero, game avatar, mecha, superhero type stuff. Exactly what you'd find in the boy aisle of the toy store.

We're all kids at heart. Except maybe Bagginsbill.

Mike 2 was probably the most popular male figure that Daz created. He wasn't a sexy model. He was much more of an Action Man. And the content for him reflected that.

It's my opinion that if you want to sell male content to straight men who are mostly, at the moment, in the first category, you need to appeal to that inner kid and provide the kinds of content, right off the bat, that that kid would want to play with. If you sexualize the male figure too much right away, it will be tainted with that connection. 

The middle categories really want more male content of all sorts. They want an ordinary looking guy (David 3) not a sex god. And lots of "ordinary" content, historical content, fantasy content, and sci-fi content. They'll take whatever you give them as long as the quality is good and the content is versatile. For these folks, you can push a figure at them all day long, but if he doesn't have the stuff they need to go with him, he will fall flat.

I think Daz had the right idea with Mike 1 and 2, but at some point, they seemed to go off into a direction that just didn't appeal to the stereotypical straight male user, or the female one, and they did it without adequately supporting folks who make up the middle categories of user.

TL;DR: It's not the figure itself or the content, but how you market it, how you present it to the customer.

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PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.