JoePublic posted at 1:43 AM Fri, 14 April 2023 - #4462129

But I stopped "believing" into Poser's continuing success the moment DAZ issued a figure with Studio only features (V4), but my fears were summarily dismissed.

Sorry, but I find the native Poser figures since Poser 6 COMPLETELY unuseable. Some of them I made "beareable" with a lot of work (I've even managed to "un-ugly" Alyson), but for the most part they aren't worth my time.

So, unless I see a really professionally made native Poser figure, I continue to just "use" Poser because of, well, yes "inertia".

But I don't "believe", or better said, "trust" in it anymore. Sorry.

Good post. The downfall of Poser actually happened sooner. It all came down to arrogance. Poser was on the second iteration of Face Room. At the time, it only supported native figures but they wanted to support DAZ figures. They offered DAZ the opportunity, but they wanted a ridiculous fee to do so. DAZ declined, and that was the cause of a terminal rift between the two companies. DAZ was already uncertain about Poser's future because they saw that the company was being run by morons (Smith Micro), so they had already started working on DAZ Studio as a vehicle for their multi, multi-million dollar yearly figure sales. Unlike Bondware, they had the wisdom to recognise the program for what it was - an engine to drive sales.
Smith Micro overvalued inclusion in Faceroom, and while it was perhaps fair to request a reasonable contribution towards their costs with the now defunct Faceroom, the amount they wanted was enough to fund development on the whole program for a year. Even then, as now with Bondware, they also overvalued the quality of their own figures. As you say, "Unusable," and now they're also playing technology catchup with Genesis' clothing and hair fitting multi-compatibility system. Even back then, when it was Michael and Victoria 2, maybe 3, without DAZ, Poser would quickly have faded into obscurity.

I certainly don't trust that Bondware has the business nous and especially not the marketing savvy, to guide Poser, although the tech guys seem to be in a pretty good head space. Sadly the devs are financially constrained in what they can do.