Razor42 posted at 10:20PM Wed, 18 November 2015 - #4239434

Is Poser providing a fertile ground for 3rd party content development and therefore a stronger community in general? Or moving to insulate itself as a small market niche software package, for those that like to build from the ground up, singlemindedly focusing on SM's own main profit stream (Selling Poser packages). I fear that a system of SM's anti Daz3d Collaboration approach is that it's a little anti 3rd party developer in general. Which is reflected in an industry wide slowing of Poser content creation.

Well, Paul and Pauline are merchant resources, so I don't think they're anti third party in general.

I suspect we Rosity/DAZ types are a niche market for SM. Their bread and butter are TV shows that need to do quick animations, instructional animations (like the ones at Wal-Mart's automatic cashiers), documentaries, industrial video, forensic animators, commercial artists who do ads and technical illustrations, etc.

They're happy to have us, and will support us if it's not too much trouble, but they aren't going to jump through a lot of hoops. Yoking themselves to DAZ just doesn't make sense to them. It's not a matter of ego or grudges, it's that their main business is not Vicky users, and they aren't going to marry DAZ in order to keep Vicky in Poser.

If there market share is sinking it will become harder and harder to sustain oneself as a content developer with a Poser exclusive approach. This in turn will add to the independant 3rd party developer drop off. It seems to be heading down a gloomy path. Less content, less relevant content, leads to less users, leads to less development of 3rd party content due to viability issues, which leads to less users and so on. SM need to break this chain with Poser sooner rather than later.

Maybe they don't. Maybe they make enough money from their corporate users that they don't need us. It's nice to have us, but maybe they'll be just fine without us.

I really think all the supposed drama is just business. DAZ wasn't sure Poser would survive, and did what they could to ensure they would survive even if Poser didn't. SM doesn't see DAZ customers as all that important to their business, and aren't going to rewrite Poser for them. Nothing personal. Sucks for us, but it's nothing personal.