Well, speaking as someone who paid to purchase Carrara 7 at full price, I don't feel cheated.  I didn't know DAZ's pattern of releasing free former versions to magazines, but I also don't like to wait a year and half to upgrade.  I quickly bought Carrara 8 pro when it came out and I don't feel any regret about how I purchased version 7.  I'm like that with movies too; if I want to see something I go and see it in the theatre right away, I don't like to wait for it to come out on dvd.  And for books I will shell out nearly 3 times as much for the hardback version rather than wait the year-plus for the less costly paperback version.

I don't think DAZ has respected Carrara particularly to this point, or realized what they've got, but on the other hand a DAZ employee mentioned that Carrara 8 has been the biggest and most successful software launch in the history of DAZ  up to this point, so I'm thinking they will start hopefully paying more attention and devoting more resources to its development.  Even so, I don't think DAZ is killing Carrara though.   On the other hand, it looks pretty clear that they don't care much about developing Hex.  But Bryce seems to have some weight for them, as evidenced by the new version being beta tested now.