Bondware acquires Poser and Poser Pro
Bondware, the parent company of online CG community and content marketplace Renderosity, has acquired the Poser product line from previous owner Smith Micro. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The sixth owner for Poser since its original release in 1995
The deal makes Bondware the sixth owner in the veteran figure design and animation tool’s 24-year history.
Of those, Smith Micro developed the software for the longest period, having acquired Poser from previous owner e-frontier in 2007, launching a new edition, Poser Pro, the following year.
Both products were then updated steadily, each averaging a major release roughly every two years until 2015’s Poser 11 and Poser Pro 11, the last full-point updates.
Despite the lack of recent development activity, Poser retains a devoted following, particularly in the hobbyist community, although it has also been used for commercial illustration and previs work.
Smith Micro’s official announcement simply says that it has sold the software to Bondware, and that it plans to focus the company on its core business, wireless technology.
Sold to a long-term reseller and Poser content marketplace
Bondware itself has a long involvement with Poser, Renderosity having begun primarily as an online Poser community before expanding to cover a range of DCC applications.
The site provides an online marketplace of stock content, much of it for Poser or DAZ Studio, DAZ 3D’s free rival application, and was previously a Poser reseller.
User reaction to the buyout has been largely positive, with one poster commenting that the software was “finally in the hands of a team that cares about it”.
Poser Pro 11 now available at a discount, but no sign of Poser 11 itself
Bondware has also cut the price of Poser Pro “for a limited time”: version 11, previously sold for $349.99, is now available for $199.
However, another consequence of the buyout seems to be that the product line has been reduced to a single edition once more.
At the time of posting, neither the Renderosity marketplace nor the standalone Posersoftware.com website listed Poser 11 itself for sale: only the Pro edition.
Prior to the buyout, the base edition sold for $129.99: still cheaper than Poser Pro by some margin, even with the current discount.
Read Bondware’s official announcement that it has acquired the Poser product line
Updated 26 August 2019: Read Bondware’s development update about the upcoming Poser 11.2