"But then you have other artists who make their living producing several original figures on a regular basis..."

This is very true. 3DUniverse is a good example, though their figures are all toonish.

I'm not sure there's a good answer to the general situation. Genesis has potential but it needs to work equally well in DS and Poser. Beyond that, the market needs to grow. I think that Both Poser and DS are too involved to ever gain mass appeal. I'm not familiar with iClone to know if it is more of a casual solution. Something approaching 3D clipart with the ability to easily clone people from photos, make animated avatars, little cell phone movies, games etc. might appeal to a large number of people. I think that's where DAZ wants to go with their Gizmoz, Decimator etc. If there an app that appealed to more than artists and could use the same content, then there would probably be an explosion of stuff being created to meet the demand. It's happened before - desktop publishing went from professional to semi-pro to everyone creating flyers, cards etc. Maybe it will happen in this field as well but I've given up predicting that it will :-)

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken