If I was SM, I'd be working on a team to push the envelope to produce the quality content necessary to act as a jump-starter for the marketplace and I'd run the marketing department over-time, every week, with content-promotion and content-creation partnerships with quality vendors who push the limits of new platform features. New features are great, but they're meaningless if there aren't any products that use them.

Agreed. However having such a structure in place is not cheap and takes a while to get working right. Yes there might not be any short term financial gain, but in the long run it can definitely pay off. You as a company need to show seriousness in supporting a feature or platform as well as supporting it with content, provided it's viable of course. Others will follow if you set an example.

You cannot expect others to invest in something if you the creator are not willing to do so yourself. Same applies for figures. The whole "here is a new toy, have fun" mentality doesn't work anymore from a financial standpoint. You need to invest in it if others are to invest in you. Which is why I wonder how this Cycles system is going to work. Is SM just going to release it and expect people to do things themselves, or are they going to provide users with Shaders, lights etc. Do they have content developers providing those things as well? Time will tell. If not, I doubt the casual user will be that interested if it means more work on their behalf to use the new engine.I agree. However, nothing easy is worth doing... Or, at least worth paying someone to do. If someone wishes to actually make money, then they have to elect to do the "hard stuff."

In this case, what it means is a good marketing push and a partnership with artists that have proven their skills, not just artists who have agreed to pay marketing fees... For instance, let's say SM gives Renderosity an extra 5 or 10% kickback rebate for all new Poser programs purchased. But, they do this in consideration of Renderosity instituting a structured marketing program that highlights products that meet certain rigid Poser 11 requirements. In essence, it's a "pay for promo" scheme where much of the "work" is done in promotion by third-party resellers and content sellers. A "Poser 11" graphic, showing buyers that a product contains special features for Poser 11 users, gets put on applicable products. The particulars would be outlined in the rebate agreement, but the focus would be for resellers to more strongly coordinate their efforts in not only targeting such rebates, but also in the promotion of quality products that meet a "known" standard, acting not only to increase visibility of a new product (Poser), but communicating to users that certain products meet very high standards of production.

Of course, every reseller wants their customers to believe all their products reach such standards... But, the truth is, their customers already know that they don't all have such lofty standards. A lot can be said for a simple sticker plastered on a product that points out it has settings/options specifically crafted to take advantage of "new, awesome, outstanding, ridiculously cool" capabilities. Even if resellers/SM didn't have such a program, individual creators could take advantage of "catching a new wave" by not only promoting their products, but by promoting new features that take advantage of new technology.

Of course, it takes little effort, given the tech we're looking at, to produce decent alternative installs/materials/whatever to make the product compatible with legacy software. Any competent creator should be able to produce alternatives for users of legacy software as a companion file/setting for their genre of products that can take advantage of new tech.

SM could do this or resellers could do this, on their own, with little other than some sort of competent Q.A. screening program, which all resellers should have in place, if they value their reputation. If there's such a program in place, here, for instance, then it would take little more than an artist pumping out a "sticker" and someone squeezing out a vendor white-paper regarding what sorts of new tech the product must include in order to get special recognition as being something that showcases new product features. (And, where are people going to go to find products that obviously take advantage of the capability of their multi-hundred-dollar new software? They're going to go to the place that has all the stickers on their products that say those products take advantage of those new features...)

/shrug

But, unfortunately, that's probably too hard for most resellers to coordinate. At least, most of them. I've only seen one reseller that handles new product and marketing pushes well and that maintains a stable of "brand name" creators who are known for their quality products.