I guess not being a rabid fan of Poser makes me a liar and a troll. Wow, that is so interesting casamerica, that I need to write that down for future reference. So I guess it's "If you aren't with us, you are against us..." eh?

CL isn't unique, at least not in the way you are making it sound casamerica. They are just another company trying to survive long enough to cash in on what obviously is a very big market, to get return on their three year investment and will do whatever it takes to make that happen. That doesn't make them bad people, just people with poor judgement. There is nothing wrong with being dedicated to seeing such an investment to completion, but let's not try to make it out to be more than that (like they are doing everyone a big favor because they care). If there were no money in Poser, they wouldn't have bothered.

CL is unique in the fact that they have a rabid fan base, but I think that has more to do with what the program does than the actual mechanics or even the company (especially since CL is the third owner of Poser). It has brought art to the masses, masses that have almost reached the point of addiction. Poser has no competition, no where else to get that "fix" if I may be so bold. If a product came out tomorrow that worked like Poser (and accepted Vicky, Mike and pz3 files) and had less bugs in it and good customer support. Don't you think many would drop CL like a bad habit? Look at Daz's Vicky and Mike and how they completely annihilated the use of Posette and Dork for most people. Brand loyalty is a myth. People get what works for them regardless of the brand. The loyalty is only when the product happens to fit a brand that they like.

When CL released Poser 5, they knew (and don't think they didn't) that this would be the reaction. It's not hard to see that the fan base will eat up anything that was said or done in relation to Poser 5. This is why they found it acceptable to put out such a lemon, because they knew it would raise cash and their fans would forgive them, because the fans have no choice if they want to do that style of artwork without spending lots more money. There is no other alternative and so with a closed market like that, they have the freedom that most companies don't have.

In another note, I was a bit unclear in my previous statement. I do have sympathy for the programming staff at CL for their hardships. It is never fun, and often a stressful time, when forced into that situation by poor management decisions. As I said before, no one on a development team wants to see a project go south. It's almost like watching a child die. You want the program to live, but you also need to eat, and so it's a difficult struggle to spread yourself between those two worlds. So to them, they have my respect as I know it's not their fault that the company dealt them that hand. However, my comment about sympathy for CL (meaning it's management) is still true for me.

Maybe if CL went out of business, the development staff and the program would be put into the hands of someone who knows how to run a software company thus giving Poser 5 a stable future. For now, all we know is that the CL is in deep financial trouble, they have a protection scheme that depends on them being in business, and that Poser 5 is probably the worse release since Anarchy Online and a fix may come in an undetermined amount of time (weeks, but no word on how many weeks). I would not recommend Poser 5 to anyone under these circumstances until CL could show that it has a future.

After all, $349 may be a drop in the bucket for some people (or $129 even), but for others it's a lot and people deserve to have a working product when they've plunked down that money.