"Using statistic to prove how healthy a piece of software is, can be very misleading." 

True, but these statistics are not looking at the health of the actual software packages, they are looking at the vitality of the associated marketplaces to give an indicator as to the current trends associated with the software package usage. Again, when looking at several relevant sources of numbers and statistics in cohesion there does seem to be some indicators that Poser is not the flag ship it used to be in the industry. I have heard a lot of opinion based defence denying this is true, but in reality opinion is an even less reliable indicator than statistics based determinations.

We all know that statistics can be used in ways to apparently skew facts like 95% fat free, which really means the product is %5 fat. But any marketplace, especially web based ones, that say a decline in traffic is a non issue is a little in denial of what is happening in their own market sector. 

A weather man can take all available data and run various simulations using multi million dollar equipment and from that evaluate that there is a 90% chance that the wil be 2-3 inches of rain tomorrow or you can just ask your neighbour "Ya reckon we'll get some rain tomorrow, Jim?" I guess both could vary differently in their degree of accuracy but which do you think most people would trust more for both long term reliability and a higher accuracy rate in their forecasting.

To clarify, I was not saying you were wrong just that it is hard to come up with an accurate picture.   Personally i think you are correct and that Poser is not the flag ship it used to be, and I am someone who, with one notable exception, that has nothing but praise for what SM has done with Poser.   I am also not surprised by this development.  The market has both matured and fragmented with a large chunk of people sticking with a figure that has been around for years and have little need for new content.  What content needs they do have are not met by the market so they tend to make their own.  The inclusion of the fitting room in Poser also allowed users to take almost their entire wardrobe and fit it to any figure, that again has an impact. That at a time when there are more vendors so the spending will drop and also be spread wider.  If that is not enough the number of figures around has increased.

A large chunk of people have moved on to a figure where Daz Studio would probably be the best choice, although I really don't want to get into that tired old argument, but I feel it is a factor.

I do personally think you are right but I still have the nagging worry in that I cannot see how it is possible to quantify how many Posers users are sat at there PC or Mac on a regular basis and use Poser but make their own content, never buy content and do not upload to galleries or post on forums.  My opinion is that there are a fair number but, as you rightly state, it is an opinion and is certainly not based in fact.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.