A woman's viewpoint?
I brought this up at my office yesterday just out of interest - only the ladies, not the men.
We generally agreed that there are some types of hardcore we prefer in small doses only: the "meathole" type of stuff and the sort of imagery that looks like it was part of a gynaecology examination. Then there's personal preference - I don't like anal, for example. But hardcore got the thumbs up while softcore got the thumbs down. Looking at pictures of posing women is, frankly, boring. It's a little better with man/woman softcore where it's beautifully posed, lit and the guy is a darling but apart from that, no. If I want to look at a woman with her top off, I can just go stand in front of a mirror and I see a dozen every time I go to the gym.
Personally, I'm not knocking anyone who likes softcore, though I would imagine proportionally more porn-liking men than porn-liking women would get turned on by it. Each to his, or her, own. I rather like kissing pictures. There may also be an issue about how hardcore is getting rather unimaginative, which may be turning guys onto softcore which has to stay creative to survive. I don't mean inventing different combinations of boys, girls and garden vegetables, but in terms of plot (yes, we would like some plot), photography, dialogue etc: a twenty minute short that contains fifteen minutes of watching semi-hard dick flopping in and out of unstimulated pussy against a looped backtrack of oohs, aahs and 70s techno is a bit tedious. As an example, I used to like "dogfart" (who dreams up these names?) but you've seen one, you've seen them all.
Just my ten pence worth.
x x x Jo