It's not just that, it's that you get the same stuff later. By the time you get to 7th level and can summon, say, a dretch, a wizard could Summon something stronger, or even multiple dretches.
Edit:
So as an example, at 16th level when you can summon a single triceratops, a wizard can manage 1d4 + 1 triceratops.
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It's not just that, it's that you get the same stuff later. By the time you get to 7th level and can summon, say, a dretch, a wizard could Summon something stronger, or even multiple dretches.
True though i also imagine that a wizard will generally just sit back and let their summon do all the work while a bard would more or less go into the thick of it with their summon, that's how i see it going down.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean with those numbers. A bard could cast SM I at first level like anyone else, SM II at 4th like any other spontaneous caster, but SM III comes at 7th level which is later than a full caster (prepared full casters can get SM IV then) and it only gets worse from there.
Also, as a 6-level caster they don't get a lot of spell slots. But the real killer is that they have no options to summon monsters as a standard action, which makes summoning so much easier for the summoner class, clerics, occultist arcanists, even wizards with the acadamae graduate feat.
I personally believe the Eidolon is the main point of summoner. They're already strong, and being able to use Bard to buff them further to help make up the lower hitdice at later levels seems pretty useful to me.
You could go Summoner VMC Bard to get what you want -- Summoner to do the monster summoning as usual, and VMC Bard gives you a decent subset of Bard. DON'T do the reverse -- VMC Summoner DOESN'T give you a decent subset of Summoner.
Unfortunately, no VMC Skald exists, and Skald VMC Summoner would be terrible for the same reasons Bard VMC Summoner would be bad.