Penguinisto posted at 6:15PM Sat, 20 July 2019 - #4357492

No one has ever bought a new version of Poser for the figures - we buy for the tools. In 2019, if vendors want to halt declining sales, they need to up their game and understand the marketplace as it is, not how they wish it was. Which brings us to....

Yes, they do.

It's "the picture on the box." A NEW user is going to buy what they "see." They will pay attention to things they know, like "you can do animations" and "there's a nekkid figure" and "you can make do picture." Those customers will be buying Poser based on what they "see" and, largely, that's going to be a "figure."

An old Poser fart, like either of us and others, is going to buy Poser based on "what we see" and "what we know" too. Our knowledge is just a bit more in depth and esoteric than a new user's.

But, Poser development and marketing has largely focused on... who? People who already own a version of Poser. Sure, that's a good tactic, but you can not ignore trying to attract new customers. Old customers die. The biggest "new customer move" Poser has done are the "game dev" inclusions for import/export ease-of-use.

Okay, I promised I wasn't going to do this comparison stuff, but... the Genesis figures allow me to use stuff made for Genesis versions 1-8, and (with an add-on script) Vicky 4 as well. It takes literally one-to-three clicks in a popup window to fit old well-made crap onto the latest-and-greatest figure, no matter the morphs, with no poke-through, and it scales perfectly in 99% of clothing and hair. Part of this is projection-mapping/collision-detection, but a big part of is is that the target figure is a lineage of one very well-maintained mesh/topo combo.

^--- This.

Everyone wants "a new figure." Then, when they come out, it means everyone has to either take a second mortgage to buy products to get half the functionality out of the new figure that they currently get out of their old one or else end up buying what amounts to a figure that has much less usefulness to them in the long-run.

Then, there's the rush of substandard product releases for the new figure that make that new, wonderfully constructed, V4-Killer, had the best demigodlike figure modelers "in the business" creating it, look like a piece of crap... And, with absolutely no stewardship of any product lines because people are afraid to tell anyone that their "artistic talent" is not equitable to their "technical skill"... the figure gets a few morphs that are just variations on "surprised hobo" and some clothing items that have been rigged with copy/paste and little else.

Thus... the figure dies a grisly death. Why? _ "'Cause I've already fixed all the "surprised hobo" morphs for V4 I have and have already fine-tuned my existing library of badly rigged and horribly textured 100's of freebie and purchased crap. Why should I go through all that for yet another figure that, in the end, will not have much else produced for it that I would want to buy, anyway?"_

"Technical" stuffs matter to current users who know what's up... That is very important. But, it's not "everything." Focusing too much on "this figure is technically better" is an engineering issue, probably pushed by scripters and programmers who have delved deep into the guts of CR2s, but aren't primarily "artists." A truly good figure takes a marriage of both artist and technically skilled craftsperson.

But, to sell such a figure and to make it successful? That requires focused stewardship and knowledge of the true marketplace.

Someone above, dunno who, mentioned the disconnect between a vendor's potential imagination of what the marketplace is versus what the marketplace actually is. This is A Real Thing ™. This is why there are specialist occupations in the real world. This is why an artist aggressively pursues trying to get their work into a good gallery and why a good gallery will stay in business no matter how many artists starve.. because they don't know how to make their art "marketable."

If we want a good figure, it needs to do what you have suggested above. It needs to be "stable." It needs to avoid the chaos of "yet another vicky-killer being introduced." And, in doing that, it will gain the attention of vendors who have technical and artistic skill that will gradually help to improve it and the selection of products created for it... for free. They will do all of this for nothing... The original figure team, the marketplace that hosts the accompanying products, doesn't have to spend hours creating new and better products for it. But, what they do need to do is to move from creator/seller to "Steward" to ensure that surprised hobo morphs and ineptly designed crappy clothing/accessory items DO NOT act to insult and degrade their carefully crafted product.

That has yet to happen outside of one particular marketplace.

Until it does, there will be no Vicky-Killer for Poser. It ain't gonna happen. The best product in the world can not survive bad management. Renderosity now has a unique opportunity - They can assert management controls over a platform product as well ass the content available for it. If they do it well, they could be very successful and their recent acquisition could actually start earning them money. If they do not, it won't and it will get sold off as a last-ditch effort to make money off a purchase that was never effectively capitalized upon. Only one marketplace has ever effectively, if not in reality, had such professional controls and influence over Poser and been successful with it. It wasn't Smith Micro...