Nevertrumper posted at 2:48 AM Sat, 14 May 2022 - #4438596

By definition, Poser is clearly not abandoned ware, for Bondware still cares for Poser. How well, would be a different subject.
It is also a fact, that Poser's fan base have shrunk.
This can be told from the new messages coming in here in the forum by a day. I remember times, when there were al least ten more with every new day. Now there is maybe one or two new posts.
The amount of products in the store have decreased as well. 
Poser lost popularity.
It is now behind DAZ and Reallusion.
Bondware has to come up with something really special to get Poser out of its corner and put it back in its pole position, where it used to be before its shameful Poser 11 release.
My guess is, that they are silent, because they are thinking about concepts.

We have multiple Poser forums, so the user base is scattered (Just like the Poser forums). 

OTOH, during the Poser 9 and 10 era, the Poser forum mods would allow Daz vendors and DS only users to disrupt every Poser single thread that was discussing Poser native figures.  If you called those vendors out on it, the mods would come after Poser users rather than tell the DS folks to go to their own forums (that they never posted to).  The same thing was happening at the RDNA forums.

The forums got so toxic that a lot of people left.

That being said, if you don't do pin up art, there isn't a lot here anymore.  Then there is the All Caucasians, All the Time issue.  Not to mention the whole Logan's Run vibe as far as characters.  And no children outside of Baby Luna as an added "bonus".

Yet another issue is the fact that the Poser base isn't united behind one figure.  Because Poser is a toolbox, we can use any figure we want - we have the ability to upgrade any legacy figure that strikes our fancy, and bring it up to Poser 12 standards (weightmapping, control surfaces, Superfly materials, etc).

This is why the top threads are about Aiko 3, Antonia, and others - for the end user, it is great.  For vendors, it is THE reason to leave Poser for DS. 

If what you want isn't sold here, you won't be shopping here, nor will you be posting to the forums.  Which is why I don't post all that much here anymore (along with four years of elder care).

What is important to remember is that in Poser (and DS) - content is divorced from base meshes, so use what you want.

If vendors don't want to make content for figures I use, I'll just convert the content I already own to the figure I do want to use; the money that could have gone to those vendors goes to a vendor that makes what I want to buy.  I don't care if it is Poser native or not - if it isn't (and almost 3/4ths of what I buy isn't), it doesn't take much work to make it Poser native (Thanks again to Wilddial and Ken1171).

Poser is an incredibly powerful program to use, if the user can be bothered to do so.