Quote - Today's e-mail from Poserworld said they were starting a new business (making custom 3D models), because they believe the Poser and DS user base is shrinking.

Is that true?  Why would the user base be shrinking?  Is everyone moving on to Lightwave or other high end software? 

Poserworld has a business model that may not be sustainable.  What also works against them is they don't make hookerware for V4 - they make practical things - which is why I am a member.

As far as "shrinkage", for the past decade the Poser user base has been "shrinking" - With the release of Poser 9/2012, we are actually in negative numbers - and I suspect that with the release of the GameDev version, the "shrinking" Poser userbase will create a black hole and destroy the Earth - which will be dissapointing to fans of the Zombie Apocolypse and those that fear the Large Hadron Collider.

Poser users are not also moving to higher end software - this is the same crowd that says they can't afford to pony up $40 or so for an old copy of Poser 9.

The market is fragmenting however.  Consider the confluence of the following:

1.  The V4 market is saturated.  When was the last time something for V4 rolled out that made everyone say "Damn, I GOTTA have that!"  Yeah, I don't remember either.  In all seriousness, how much hookerwear and early 20's white chicks do you need?

2.Post V4 figures:

a.  Genesis never got much traction with the vendors outside of DAZ.  In addition to that, the vendors making genesis content with very few exceptions (Dariofish here and Male3dia over at DAZ) are making the exact replicas of the bland, early 20's Caucasians since the release of V4.

b.  Anytime a new Non-DAZ figure is released, self-appointed "experts" will proceed to flood the forums to make mountains out of molehills - using standards that they NEVER would apply to their figure of choice (i.e. V4 or genesis for the DS community).

3.  Vendors

a.  Most vendors have a Poser 7 workflow and they are aggressively uninterested in using any post-Poser 7 advancement.  They learned how to do something in Poser 7 and that is good enough for them.  The really believe that no one uses any version of Poser past the one that they learned on.

b.  Customer:  *I'd like some clothing for M4.*Vendor:  "Almost a decade ago I made a product for Apollo Maximus, it didn't sell well, therefore I will never make male clothing ever again." 

c.  Then there is the whole I'm an artist, I make what I want nonsense. God forbid they do market reseach - or use mechanisms like kickstarter so that every product is financially viable BEFORE they start work on it.  That would interfer with their artistic abilities apparently. 

4.  Users.

a.  The genesis users do not appear to venture outside of the DAZ cul-de-sac.  There isn't any reason do, especially since the genesis 2 figures are branching even farther away from Poser, the state of DSON and the lack of non-DAZ genesis content mentioned above.

b.  Those of us that have moved beyond the Poser 7 workflow have other storefronts (and forums) to visit.  Renderosity is in a Poser 7 timewarp and I don't think they will be leaving anytime soon.  I want products that take full advantage of 2014 - and many of those are sold elsewhere.

c.    Dawn has a dedicated storefront for people that want a V4 (and soon an M4) replacement that takes full advantage of Poser 9+.  The same can be said of other characters.  Not to mention that the troll factor is much lower at other forums.

d.  Because I fully leverage the capabilities of Poser 2014, I spend less time in this storefront. 

e.  As far as the forums, a lot of topics are beating the same horses as they were a decade ago (This being one of them along with this new version of Poser doesn't do what I need, therefore it sucks! or the ever popular, All hail some earlier verison - which somehow go so much better than it was when it was actually released.)  Some of the newer ones are variations of How can I get genesis working in Poser?

*The market is fragmenting and people are going to gravitate to places that cater to what they want.