I couldn't care less about the activation method. Bottom line is, if the new poser doesn't have support for the new and improved figures then I see no point in buying another version. I really can't see what revolutionary feature they can introduce that could warrant an upgrade but I don't think V4 has another decade in her. At least they can come up with a figure on par. Stagnation in 3D tech is never a good thing.

Well the first question does Poser need a new figure, if the answer is yes does it have to come from SM and whatever the answer what should the new figure include. Funny I seem to remember a thread by Teyon asking about a new figure, it went for pages and it does not seem to be that long ago. 

I don't care who makes the new figure but we have to be realistic. Daz has a massive content creating mechanism. I don't believe that any new figure not supported by it can have even a fraction of the content that Genesis has. I know a lot of people like to create their own clothes and morphs and textures, I wish I could too. Every new figure that comes out dies within months, that's my personal opinion at least. I just hope that there will be an effort to stop the divide because I'm not planning on leaving poser for any other program any time soon and I'm really jealous of all the new toys.

Well now Daz has moved Genesis to industry standard weight mapping I guess there is a chance that the gap will narrow, at least for a while but I really can't see that stopping the divide.  The venture capitalists that have invested in Daz have definite ideas where they are going, and after all it is their money.  Poser is on a different track and both might result in the loss of at least some of the hobby users, either by lack of or changing features or pricing the total cost out of some users reach.

I think you're a bit off here, hornet.......  let's look at what we have here. DAZ brings out a new figure which is all about GAME DEV. 

Oh, wait, SM did that how many months back?  Heck, they gave the game dev community their entire product line with PP14GameDev.

So think about this......who's following who again?

Hobbyists don't need 130+ bones!  Animators do.

My guess is that DAZ is scrambling to catch up to the next version of Poser and simply tried to beat them to the punch.

When have we seen this before?  Oh, yeah, DS4 wasn't it?

DAZ just dumped their "game changing" Genesis rigging.  And, told the hobbyist crowd to take a hike.

ROFLMAO!