The replacement of development teams has predictably slowed down releases (which is not the same as development), and the communication about what is being done has been less open than before. Understandable, too, as replacing a development team takes a lot of work that is rather uninteresting to the outside world. Work on Poser 11 has continued, with various updates and fixes along the way.

SM is requesting users share their wishes and feature requests on their own forums. You can pin-point a few common threads in these responses, but obviously a program will never be everything to everyone and choices will be made. Which those are remains largely unknown, but I'm sure the users aren't the only ones who can pin-point where Poser could do with (substantial) updates.

At the end of the day, Poser is a tool. What comes out of it has a lot to do with what the users can do with it. Photographers can make fantastic images on an iPhone, while tourists can make terrible snapshots on a Nikon D610. What SM can try to do is make SM easier to use, but that's still no guarantee. The internet is full of people who manage to turn a pre-made 3D model, pre-made materials, and pre-made HDR lightning set-up into a dreadful image.

I just don't get this myopic focus on characters as somehow the One True Yardstick by which all software should be measured. It may be different if you're in the business of creating content for characters, or if you're in the business of making tons of nude renders. Environment and prop wise there also hasn't been anything I haven't been able to use in Poser. If anything, the success of Iray in other software has made it easier, as the PBR textures can easily be plugged into Poser and work wonderfully with Superfly.