Steve athome - 22 June 2012 11:25 PM
I am still awaiting what the plans are for Hexagon. DAZ_bfurner put forward:-
I hope in the next several weeks I’ll be able to give you more input on what the plans are for Hexagon. I don’t think you all will be disappointed.
That statement made here:- http://forumarchive.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=179633&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=10
It is now over 6 months later, still nothing!!
Well…hmmm…let’s see….plans for Hexagon….gee, I can’t imagine what they might….
THEY GAVE IT AWAY FOR FREE !!!! Did you guys miss that??
It has become solely a tool to generate content sales. That’s it. Why would they have even the slightest incentive to invest another penny in costly development of software that is only useful to get people to buy content??? As long as people see a cool package of free software, and it works reasonably well, it’s doing its job. Period.
And do the people who it’s drawing in give a damn if Hexagon has fancy new features it doesn’t already have? For the most part NO, because the market is for people who want to buy premade stuff, drop it in their scenes, and hit RENDER. Some might play with the free modeller, but for the vast majority modelling is WAY too complicated and too deep, when all they want to do is use content and make renders. Which is why Poser and D|S don’t even have modellers built in. And these new users have invested ZERO in the software, which means they could, and would, drop it at a moment’s notice and move on to the latest video game without giving it a second thought.
If people have to spend hundreds of $$ for software, it means they’re somewhat serious and probably intend to use it for a long period, and are probably very hesitant to drop it and move on to some other interest. You’re attracting fairly serious artists or hobbyists or whatever. Not so when you give it away. You’re getting, for the most part, a short term surge in content sales for as long as the buzz lasts. And once that’s over, what do you do? You can’t lower the price any lower on Hexagon (or Bryce, or D/S), so somehow you have to keep new content buyers coming in. And how many new content buyers are you going to attract by hyping the fact that Hexagon 3 now has voxel sculpting and retopology? Most will scratch their heads and say, “yeah, whatever….”
You can argue all day long that it’s going to attract people who really care about new Hex tools and features, but only time will tell. I think the chances are slim to none. And anyone who thinks that the content sales that Hex generates are going to cover development costs to keep developers working on Hex are, IMO, dreaming.
One developer working for a year probably costs something like $100k total (I’m guessing). How many sets of Genesis clothes is that?
