Well, I understand the vendor angle, trying to make their content appeal to as wide an audience as possible to maximize profit. I seem to recall the Gen4 figures only being compatible with P5 and up, so there's not a lot of reason to still be supporting Poser 4. Most people still using P4, and even P5, generally aren't big spenders, since there have been numerous sales and promos at prices so low that just about anyone with some pocket change could afford to upgrade if they wanted. There was a point when Poser 6 was being given away for free even, to anyone with a valid P5 serial. I think that was around the time of P7's release.

Right now P10 upgrades are on sale for about the same price as 2 dresses for vicky. But I'm sure there are still folks out there who will skip it cause it's still not cheap enough.

I agree with the point regarding vendors that refuse to update their pipelines out of laziness or a philosophy of not trying to fix what they see isn't broken. If it's working for them they don't see a reason to change. The problem with that is it eventually reaches a point where that refusal of new methods prevents everyone from progressing. The only way to really counteract it is for other content artists to make a serious effort in producing more content that utilizes the newest features and methods, to act as examples of what is possible and get their customers anxious for more of it. In the process it squeezes out the old stuff and makes room for the new. It does take risks, since building for the latest features narrows the customer base for what you produce innitially, but it also doesn't require an all or nothing approach either. Some items can require only the latest version of Poser while the others can still be backwards compatible.

I agree with backwards compatability to an extent but eventually it becomes a barrier to progress. Most software is only backwards compatible up to a certain number of versions, 2 or 3 at most. That helps to keep customers moving foreward and almost forces them to eventually upgrade or just get left behind. Of course that also requires having figures that people actually want to use. If most everyone is still content with using Gen4, because they aren't seeing anyone producing better figures that are designed for Poser's latest tech, then there's no real reason for them to want to upgrade the software. And what happens when the Gen4 figures no longer work in the latest version of Poser? As it is I've had issues getting various morphs to function correctly in PP2014. Hiro 4, for example - still cannot get him to load no matter what I've tried. Freak 4 loads just fine and I used the same install process for both of them. His head loads, and his forearms change, but the rest of him stays M4, including his eyes. Very frustrating. I don't have that problem in P7. 

 

~Shane