ajf412 (7/1/2021)
Does Reallusion have actual sales, or are they gimmicks
Both. Price-jacking happens too where the original price is inflated to make the sale price look better. Recognizing actual sales from gimmicks requires care and patience on your part.
Play the long game, don't just add to cart because a promotional email has a clock ticking down. Take the new Terrain Generator plugin... sounds good in theory, but getting bad feedback in another thread. Apparently worth $200. On sale for $149. BUT... if it's a dud plugin, the price is a joke. Or if the plugin fills a hole that shouldn't be there in the first place, you can question the value.
iClone 8 apparently addresses "optimization", implying they've ignored it until now. For a real-time render engine, you'd think they would have solved the "rendering hidden details" issue by now. If you try to make a large detailed scene currently, you may run into trouble. Perhaps they should have released an "optimization plugin" and sold it for $200. But that would have been criticized. So instead they've made it a "feature" of iClone 8 we're expected to want to upgrade because apparently iClone 7 cannot be optimized.
In the end, software vendors call the shots on their own products. If they want to fragment their products all day long, it's their choice. We would hope their primary motivation is to make a strong product rather than endlessly manipulating user perception in order to maximize what's added to your cart.