There are some great news coming from the IClone front. Its latest release - which is 7.2.1 - boasts better and optimized support for Daz figures, especially Genesis 8 facial expressions and material import. See this link and this link.

IClone's 2018 development roadmap is also very enticing, See this link.

IClone's optimized support for Daz figures proves that both Daz3D and IClone are very serious about working together on even tighter (possibly even native?) interoperability between Daz contents and IClone.

The 2018 development roadmap for IClone shows some very interesting features such as support for the IRay renderer - in the coming months.

For Carrara, the consequences are nothing short of disastrous. It means that Daz3D will be more and inclined to invest in the IClone pipeline, and shelf Carrara for good and forever.

Those of you who are pushing their naivete to the point of continuously asking for a Carrara 9 - as I see in Daz3D Carrara forum - please take note: Carrara is more dead than ever, because its development budget is exactly $0.00.