It's simple really. If a sector is no longer bringing in revenue, EG Carrara, DSON Poser support, must a company continue to support it and focus their energy there? Does it make sense to support a sector that is not financially viable anymore? No it doesn't. These days you have to be very careful where you place your time and resources. What worked in the past doesn't always work today. Peoples interests and usage needs changes. Daz's focus is Studio and the Genesis platform because that is where the bulk of their revenue is coming from. Don't like that? Then continue using whatever makes you happy. A company is not going to change their business plan just to cater for your preference and lose money doing so. 

end quote:

 

If you bother to take a look at the thread on Daz forum, that Carrara is, in fact, bringing in a substantial amount of revenue.

If you would like to disagree with that fact, please do the maths first,

Here's an example of how to approach the maths:

 

Before our data collection survey Daz knew this:

1. How many people own Carrara.
2. How many people 'own' Daz Studio.
3. How many people own both.
4. They (probably) knew who had actually downloaded the above software.
5. They knew what percentage of products people 'purchased' for free at the Daz store.
6. They knew how much each member spent in the daz store.
7. They also know the changes in the buyer's habits over time.

However, Daz did not know the answers to one of the questions at the beginning of this thread:

Paraphrased, that question was:

1) how much was spent by people who were primarily Carrara users - as those users might own other software - eg Studio.

Initial results of the survey

I havent had enough time to count the sample size in this thread but....

Simple statistics tell us:

If the sample size is approximately 70 then, given a confidence level of 95 percent, that gives us a confidence interval of around 12.

A confidence level of 12, means that, regardless of knowing the population of users who buy content soley for use in Carrara, Daz can

look at the content figures here and extrapolate that, for every Carrara user, their content numbers/pages will be between plus and minus 12 percent

of the average amount of content/number pages revealed in this survey.

That means that Daz can use those figures to detemine, within a 24 percent margin, how much the Carrara users who have not contributed to this thread have spent.

Variables that are irrelevant here are:

1. the number of free items a user owns in his content list - because Daz already has that knowledge.

2. the number of Blender downloads per minute - as this will not effect the historical data we are giving Daz.

Variables that Daz knows that we don't.

1. Numbers of Carrara software purchased.

2. Numbers of people downloading updates.

Variables no one knows.

1. Number of users using free Carrara software (obtained from dvd on mag) or pirated Carrara software - still relevant if they buy items to use in Carrara from Daz.

Initial Conclusions

We have given Daz enough data to make a reasonable estimate of the amount of money they will lose by not supporting Carrara into the future.

Daz needs to determine is it's Carrara user base by taking into account:

1. Maximum User Base: given by number of Carrara purchases.
2. Minimum User Base: the number of users who have downloaded updates.
3. Possible Sales Base: the number of individuals visiting this forum on a regular basis

Course of Action

Daz can use the statistics here to extrapolate historical data within 24 Percent error with a 95 percent certainty.

That to my mind is a great improvement over their previous lack of data.