Don't sweat the life-cycle of a figure Kazam561.  A 2 year active life-cycle for a figure is pretty much the norm - V4 was the outlier.  Any figure not named Victoria 4 will end up being a niche figure, even the DAZ ones. Fortunately, it is easy to harvest V4/M4 content for use with other figures.  Well, except for shoes - those aren't easy.

If a particular figure has something you need - use it as long as you need it.  I am still using products from the DAZ V2/M2 & Posette era, because I am not recasting my story arcs with new figures every 2 years.  The same can be said of my M4/V4 and SM G2 figures. 

Don't sweat the rantings of the DAZ vendors here - if they were confident of their decisions, they wouldn't be posting in Poser forums, they would be helping out their customers in the DS forums.

AFA DAZ & SM working together - don't hold your breath - Since the release of DS1, the only post-Poser 4 tech DAZ has added to DS is the ability to read .mt5 and .mc6 files with the release of DS4.5.  It has to go both ways, and DAZ is very much a My way or the highway kind of company.

Thank you ssgbryan

The dust settled, thinking "what a fine home, at least for now" not realizing that doom would soon be coming in the form of a vacuum cleaner.