I've always known software (and cars and video and everything else) is dearer here in the UK. Out of curiousity I just looked up current UK prices for P4 and PPP (since I can't remember what I paid - too long ago). A quick look at half a dozen sites showed only one selling it - Technomatic (Microwarehouse). Their prices were 195 GBP for P4, 223 GBP for PPP (carriage is free). Now by my rough calculations thats over $630 USD. So as to what we will pay for upgrades in the UK... I'm not even going to speculate. -- Mark PS. This is NOT a critisism of CL. Virtually all software seems to carry a similar markup. It's just the way things are.

Spanki: Quite right. No matter what the upgrade costs it's going to be less than I've spent on models and textures over the last year. -- Mark

No matter what price they set, there will always be some people who can't/won't pay it (sad, but true.) Let's face it, the majority of the world's population probably doesn't even have internet access, and may not even know what it is. CL has to set a price point. When you look at other software packages, $550 isn't that much for a good product (Spanki made an excellent point with PhotoShop.) For their loyal customers (those who have been upgrading regularly) another $200-$250 for the next upgrade, especially what looks to be a very powerful one, is reasonable. We aren't talking about $250 a month, we're talking about $250 every few years. It's much cheaper than Cable TV, much cheaper than going to the movies every couple of weeks... And which brings you more pleasure/satisfaction?

Arrrrgh Brycetech he told me the computer I bought from him was a one of a kind, then sold you one! Where is this Columbus guy, I wanna have a word with him! 8^) Marque

Yggdrasil wrote: "PS. This is NOT a critisism of CL. Virtually all software seems to carry a similar markup. It's just the way things are." Musicat wrote: "unfortunately you have to remember the import/export laws. what your country sets for prices on those is up to them." Guys, one myth that has to be discontinued, is that companies do not have control on foreign countries prices. They much DO have and there ARE things they can do. They can not give exclusivity to foreign resellers. By allowing several companies to resell their products in a foreign country, companies can have: - undirect but effective control over final prices. The presence of competition is a natural antidote to speculations. If competitor companies are distributing Poser in say Italy, they won't be able to raise the price ad lib, because this would kill their sales as people will buy from the other companies. - companies can also this way sell and distribute download-only versions of the software, all over the world, without breaking any exclusive contracts because there are none. Of course, this would mean for a company to give up the immediate profit from exclusive resellers, but if they product is good and strong (and Poser 5 apparently may be), they will end up making more money in the long run. And they will improve SIGNIFICANTLY their company reputation abroad. And make thousands of customers happier and willing to get back to them. THIS, it is not depending on foreign government laws or whatsoever. This is a choice that depends ENTIRELY on the software company (in our case, Curious Labs).

Eoipso wrote: "That would be really bad from them to treat loyal customers worse than those people..." Haven't they already done that? when they have condoned warez users on one side, and on the other, at about the same time, they committed Pro Pack resale to companies that sack British users with a 70% increase, Italian users of a 70-75% increase, Swedish users of 100% increase... isn't this ALREADY what you mention?

Just thought I'd mention one thing that no one seems to have gotten around to. I'm pretty sure, from all I've seen, that Poser 5 will put Poser at the level of a PRODUCTION TOOL. This is a distinction that must be made for a few reasons: 1. I paid over 550 bucks for Character Studio in 3ds max. This doesn't include the price of 3ds max, and Character Studio is actually inferior in its abilities to Poser 4! Poser 5 offers collision detection ( something I still can't do in 3ds max, regardless of how much I spend ). The only production elements I haven't heard word of from the press release are caustics and modeling tools, and at this point, I'm not gonna bet money that caustics won't be available. I'd hate to give Steve Cooper the chance to prove me wrong, yet again. ;) 2. Within the Poser Community, there is a huge segment of the populace that is extremely skilled, enough so to do this professionally. Because of Poser's reputation in the market, however, most of us feel that we're "hobbyists". This is bullshit. We're artists, and we deserve acknowledgement. I believe Poser 5 will make that leap possible for the entire community, so anyone who says Steve Cooper and CL don't support this community can kiss my patootie. ( I'm trying to watch my language => ) 3. $550 is less than most of us have spent on content alone for Poser 4. From the look of things, Poser 5 will make content easier for us to produce, and lead to more free stuff, better products in the market place, and a whole bunch of love and goodness, so do you all think we might give this a rest? Paul P.S.: On a side note, I highly doubt that CL is attempting to "gouge" anyone for massive profits. It might be worthwhile to consider how much this level of technology actually costs to develop. I can't imagine that Steve Cooper will be sitting on a golden throne laughing maniacally as he has his feet washed with 10,000 dollar bills. ( If I'm wrong, Steve, please invite me to visit... I like concubines and money. => )

Entropic wrote: "I'm pretty sure, from all I've seen, that Poser 5 will put Poser at the level of a PRODUCTION TOOL." Then they should have made two products, a Poser Lite, without most of Propack tools (such as bones) that are mostly of interest for producers, and a Poser Pro, with all the production tool. Poser Lite would have been in the TRUE Poser price tradition, costing some $350 with an upgrade path from P4 of about $100-120, and Poser Pro would have been fully in the mid price range, at about $600-700 new and $300 upgrade ($150-180 for ProPack users). THAT would have been more fair to ALL range of users, hobbyists and pros. But if you want my guess... I think that they more or less said to themselves "why do Lite and Pro versions, since we have no competition to take care of? Let's lower just a little the highest price for full package, set it at $550, and force everyone who wants to stay up-to-date, even the hobbyists, to purchase the full package. Everyone will buy the full prog anyway because they don't want to stay behind this technology jump". And wave goodbye to the Poser price tradition. Maybe I'm thinking bad, but it's known that to think bad it's a sin, but given the world we live in, most of the times, when you think bad, you happen to think correctly...

I don't see any problem with the price for Poser5. The reason for the higher price is because it's a whole new program, it's not the poser that Metacreations created. Hopefully one the lightwave/max users get a good look at it they'll see it's not the toy they all think it is. I heard a rumour that there is going to be a lite version as well but the person who mentioned it clammed up real quick. Rob

I posted this in another thread, but I think it should be here, also. One thing I think we all need to consider, is what an MSRP price means here in the USA. Every company sets an MSRP price for their products that are much higher than the actual retail price that you can realistically buy something for. It's psycholigical. If an MSRP is high, then when you see that the selling price is much lower, you feel like you've gotten a good deal. I remember not long ago seeing the MSRP of Poser4 in various places. It was nearly $400. We all know that realistically you would only have to pay $200-$220. In another thread, someone at the show who talked to someone at the CL booth said that they were told that Poser5 would be sold for $349. This is normal in the US, set the MSRP high ($549), actual retail is lower ($349), and everyone is happy about shelling out the bucks. I'm going to be bold here and make a prediction: Poser5 full version: $349-$399 Upgrade from Poser4: $199-$249 Upgrade from P4&ProPack: $99-$149 Time will tell how far off I am. Don't these prices seem more reasonable? Patrick

Upgrade from Poser4: $199-$249 >> Upgrade from P4&ProPack: $99-$149 >> Time will tell how far off I am. Don't these prices seem more reasonable? Nope. At those prices, you just charged everyone who buys Pro Pack today an extra $100 - this is not reasonable. (Pro Pack is ~$200 more than P4, yet you're thinking P4-only users only have to spend $100 more to upgrade to P5).

I just read Legume's comments :) if saying Poser5 is great would get the person a copy then a lot of people would be getting a big surprise soon, not very likely, that would involve some serious ass kissing & my lips ain't up to the job ;) I'm content to wait till sept 18th, oops no that's not the official date that I know of, but funnily enough CL announced poser4.03 on 24th July 2000 then released it 18th September, which is about 8 weeks away from now, make your own conclusions from that :) Rob

right now I'm lucky enough to be able to afford it whatever price it's released at, doesn't mean I'd want to pay $1000 tho, slightly rich I may be but not stupid :) Rob

Very good point above that poser is not a modeler and therefore should not be put in the high end category. I'd like to see a $99 pre order offer for pro owners. At $250 it would mean that I paid $666 for the package (like I said, I just bought the pro package two months ago). Oh, and we can't have that 666 thing anyway, so ditch a number, flip it and go $99 for the upgrade. How's that for math and logic?

Well, as long as we're going for logic... When kupa posted the preview of P5 in his now well-known "California Dreamin'" thread recently, it was obvious that P5 was going to offer pretty much everything in the Pro Pack (except maybe hosting in high end packeges?), along with a slew of new and very cool features. Not too long after, kupa posted a message about tiered upgrade prices in which he stated that you would still be well off buying the Pro Pack. What should the reader have deduce from these messages? It seems that the logical deductions should be: 1. CL cannot realistically set an upgrade price that makes everyone who bought Pro Pack believe (and justifiably so) that they were played for suckers. 2. If P5 has more and better features than Pro Pack, one might expect that the upgrade price could be more than price CL set for Pro Pack...unless you bought Pro Pack already. Of course, I would be glad to be wrong, with a p4->p5 path of roughly $150. That's the rough price of an Adobe upgrade, but I have to recognize that Adobe extracts upgrade prices more than once every 3 years for more incremental upgrades in features. A $549 MSRP does seem a bit stiff when compared against Hash's Animation Master, but IMHO, you are getting prefab content that you don't get with that package. $549 is a price point roughly comparable to TrueSpace. You get much more with TS in the way of modelling, but I don't know how much of the Poser Community does a significant amount of modelling...it doesn't seem like a major feature, based on what I've seen here. TS6 moves more toward character animation, but P5+Mimic would seem to be a superior combo for about $100 more. And it may well be that the P5 renderer will be superior also. But I digress; my main point was to distill what a lot of posts have sort of danced around, which is that the information made public prior to Monday should have suggested to everyone that P4->P5 was not going to be a $99 upgrade, because this would have alienated most everyone who bought Pro Pack.

Apparently, someone went to Siggraph, found out exactly what we wanted to know from Steve and then said they felt unable to share this information with us...

In regards to the comment above, how many hobbiest own Photoshop 6? I say any serious hobbiest--despite it's steep price, is still the "world standard image editor" must eventually get it! It is the language that most digital imaging people speak. However, it you compare it to Maya and Lightwave--also professional packages they seem rediculously high. $600 compared to $1000 or $2000 dollars is a big difference. Adobe has kept the upgrade prcies low to assure that people just don't settle for the version they have and actually purchase it professional or not. CL should do the same. The bottom line is that we'll all have to just wait and see; read the reports and reviews and decide if it is worth the money to each of us.

Since I was the one who mentioned Photoshop, let me say that I agree that many hobbyists buy Photoshop. This was part of my point...a $550 MSRP is not inconsistent with use by hobbyists. I also agree that Adobe's upgrade prices are generally low for what you get (though some would say the last version isn't all that). My other point in this regard was that Adobe has done more than one in the last 3 years. If you bought Pro Pack (and I did not), your upgrade price is going to be less, and the path looks much more like buying incremental upgrades as Adobe users have. As I did not buy Prop Pack, it's going to be more like paying when you skip an upgrade of Photoshop, then do an effective double upgrade to a new version. It costs more. That's the point. Now, a new point. Reading many of these threads, one almost gets the impression that some people wish that P5 not be packed with new features. Given the sheer number of P5 wish lists that have been posted here for years, I find that hard to believe (or at least a fringe view). So what it seems to boil down to is wanting a BMW for the cost of a Hyundai. It looks like we may get a BMW for the cost of an Acura...which seems acceptable to me. Go figure;-)

throwing a figure out there in case it helps bring it to my level ;) for me, it all depends on whether CL wants more money later or less money quicker. :) any more and i'd have to save up, maybe weeks... but i'll get it eventually. i just got a mainboard and processor upgrade (~$200 US) in anticipation... lol the hard disk upgrade gets the $200 if p5 doesn't come out in august. (yeah, i haven't found the press release yet so i don't know the date.) bring it on!$! ;)

Notification post.