"Price and upgrade policy changes are coming. Autodesk will moderately increase most software product prices in North America effective August 1, 2012, and also plans to modify its upgrade policies and pricing next year. Take advantage of current pricing and upgrade paths today and move to the current release. If you act before July 13, 2012, you can save up to 20%* off upgrade SRP. Make the move and upgrade now to help protect your software investment, and help maximize your return with the many benefits offered through Autodesk® Subscription and Autodesk® 360 cloud based services."
It seems even Autodesk is increasing their software. I wonder what’s going on - just when global economy is going from bad to worst with Euro crisis deepening.
If that isnt clear sign of monopoly then i dont know what is:P Corporation with highest priced software increasing price of their software…while they know that no matter what they do they wont lose much costumers, becouse competition…well with some exceptions that you can count on fingers of one hand…sucks.
Yow. If Lightwave could get their act together and finally turn out a solid product again, they might capture some marketshare here. Sadly, I wont holg my breath. Newtek is great at missing opportunities.
If you’re a lightwave guy - give modo a shot. Newer technology, very fair price, shaping up to be feature complete and also developed by quite a few of the guys behind lightwave before they went to make Luxology (according to Wikipedia).
So if you haven’t done so already try it - it works pretty well except from the ocasional crash. Their customer service is very helpful and friendly, though. Also they have a really cool license model - you buy it and it’s your’s not your computer’s license
I think it’s pretty irrelevant who uses what and how as long as they get by with their financial plans and income.
I can see how a lot of people would want to use Maya or Max to be able to transfer projects and native file formats or to work in existing pipelines. I can also understand how some people are completely satisfied with another product that does what they need it for. Most major programs are pretty much on par with features. Each with their own unique advantages and disadvantages. Still - what works for one does not necessarily work for another. That’s why there’s variety and why it’s good to also have these options.
Ir you’re efficient with an expensive product that still justifies the price over the time you’re using it then it’s worth spending the money. As soon as it doesn’t add up any more … time to move on.
Just wait a bit longer and they’ll probably end up with something like Adobes Creative Cloud where you pay monthly to use any of their apps. They do have something called Autodesk 360 and in time we’ll probably start to see 3D Max, Maya, etc be on there as well.
Autodesk - next stop - irrelevent land.
I predict Autodesk will start laying off by 2014 (a year after they announce these changes). With on going economic crisis, their strategy will not work, and only drives users to other options and platform.
Sadly I have to agree with ZeroByteDNA here. There really isn’t any serious competition to Autodesk in the high end 3d arena at this point. The serious players in the field aren’t going to migrate to lesser tools; and there’s just no two ways about it, Modo, Lightwave and others are exactly that, lesser tools. Autodesk is all but a high end 3d monopoly at this point. They got there the old fashioned way, by buying their competition. Now they’re starting to flex their muscles.
