Razor42 posted at 7:19AM Wed, 09 November 2016 - #4289425

But by far the most detrimental factor for Poser usage for me, is the lack of a solid in house, market competitive professional figure. As 3rd party content development quite often tends to follow the pattern of the horse and rider product model. This means that there are generally speaking a few obvious 3rd party product types, the first being: The horse (The actual figure base) then products directly for the horse (Characters,morphs, textures, Poses) or content that rides the horse (Clothing, hand props etc) or the third item which is somewhere for the horse to romp (Environments). For a third party developer, the market take up of the metaphoric horse product is the benchmark to base their own sales projections on. Unless of course they want to create their own horse, which is a commercial project that even the most top tier of content developers generally shy away from. The core of the problem is that SM doesn't even truly have a horse in the race these days as far as a professional 3D human figure bases go, leaving content development for the platform somewhat stifled. This prolonged scenario doesn't particularly work well for many potential Poser users but mostly impacts on professional content creators. There is also a group that doesn't have an issue with this 'problem' and may consider it actually as a good thing for the Poser platform. This group is made up by the users that enjoy using Poser to create their own amateur figure offerings or have a strong nostalgia factor for older tech/figures/content that they own. It seems that this group is truly the current core target market of the SM business model for Poser. A new tech figure is hardly their priority and maybe even seen as a threat to many in this group that SM seem to be prioritising as the buyer group for the Poser platform.

When you look at the current development cycles you can clearly see that this group is seen as their most important market sector and is the key focus for future development. Prioritising the protection of these users legacy content has overtaken the need to keep up with market innovation and keep poser moving forward tech wise. With Cycles being the obvious anomaly. This direction has led to things like Genesis 3 needing to be put through a meat grinder to finally land in Poser somewhat incomplete. Keeping the old compatible is clearly more important than making Poser compatible with the new. This, with time, can lead to a limiting of the market demographic that Poser is the best option for, also limiting its shelf appeal for new users due to its dated content. But is mainly a big negative for professional 3rd party developers interests in the platform. There really is no denying anymore, that regardless of the health of Poser, the 3rd party market for Poser content is suffering and shrinking as a whole. And also that there is a group that have no issue with that continuing to progress, as its seen as not directly effecting them in any way.

Poser's competition has more and more been moving into filling the other aspects of the market that Poser seems to of moved out from or has left neglected over a longer period of time. This leads to the question of, if Poser is no longer a staging platform for professional modern content with user orientated content tools, What is it? Who are its user base? Who are not its user base? Is the user base primarily legacy/inbuilt content users who do not really need 3rd party content anymore or does the current user base want to see new innovation and content developed for the Platform? If it's the later why is that buyer base seemingly shrinking in its purchasing across the markets? If Poser is the best platform for making content where is that content? And in the longer term is the current target Poser software/upgrade buyer base large enough to continue to see the platform viably developed into the future? Will this purchaser base grow or decline if the current path is sustained?

So if you find yourself within this group that does see Poser as primarily a vehicle for your large existing content hoard or if you prefer dealing mainly with the quirks of figure development within the platform. Then I'm sure there is no apparent issue with Posers health for you. There is no reason as to why this kind usage of Poser will be effected for the foreseeable future.

For me the question is no longer is "Is Poser is dying?" It's 'how useful is Poser to me?". And the answer I have unfortunately arrived at is, that it really isn't. And I guess that ultimately will be the decision, that for each individual, will decide the future of the platform.

Problem is that Poser has NEVER had what you would call a " solid in house, market competitive professional figure." Never. Not once in the whole 20 years it's been in production. It's always counted on 3rd party content developers for it's content. And that's where stores like DAZ and Renderosity entered the picture. SM has always been about software and features, so it's never considered the figure to be a feature. It's always been content to them.

I actually agree with Razor's analysis about Poser's business model, although, not quite for the same reason. As long as those brokerages, and content developers didn't overreach and stayed in their own little symbiotic relationship with Poser, everyone got along hunky dory. I don't know who overreached first, DAZ or Poser, but one of them did. Let's assume, as Chris Creek told it, that it was Poser that over reached first. They opened Content Paradise. DAZ got nervous and began to develop it's own contingency plans and Studio was born. And that's where Poser made it's first (or second, depending on who you believe) misstep. They backed off and tried to put the genie back in the symbiotic bottle. But that bottle was cracked now and wasn't going to work anymore.