Yeah, historically RL target audience and marketing has been somewhat inconvenient - too expensive for hobbyists, too weak to appeal to AAA companies.
On one hand, it's slightly amusing to see a plugin costing more than a software that the plugin is "plugging" into.
On the other hand, it's their attempt at pushing higher. Maybe not for AAA but at least AA 
And the same goes for their planned attempts to release high definition texture support, subsurface scattering to get close to Unreal quality.
If RL manage to integrate well with the existing "de facto standard" tools to create more convenient workflows than MotionBuilder does (at least for your typical humanoids) then they might even be able to convince some AAA companies to give it a try.
Who would want to model & texture multiple NPCs from scratch if you can grab an CC3 base mesh, tweak it a bit and get acceptable NPC character that looks unique and realistic (hopefully, with the next CC3 updates) enough and indistinguishable from a character you would get when creating it from scratch?
On the other hand, solid AAA game studios already have their game-ready base meshes to use for NPCs (and also lead characters) in every game, so it would be very hard to sell RL products to them. Every game wants to be unique, and uniqueness is created by textures and assets. and CC3 cannot help much with these. Studios will have to create assets using industry-standard tools, and CC3/iClone can provide asset integration and animation only, which game studios already have in their current pipeline, anyway.
The best target audience seems to be startups that look for AAA quality (hopefully, the quality will come with next CC3 releases with HD textures and SSS) and convenient pipeline to kickstart their character creation. If RL manages to become a "de-facto" standard for starting 3D game studios, it already will mean some serious hooked customers and some income to use for development of other RL products.
That's why I highly welcome their latest attempts at integrating with game engines and hugely improving that slightly plasticky dollish look of their current character textures. I keep fingers crossed for the upcoming releases with a hope they will make some serious noise in the industry.
Edited
5 Years Ago by
midix