topic Re: toooooo much money for 3dsMax subscription in Perpetual License Changes (Read Only)

toooooo much money for 3dsMax subscription

th — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 00:09:10 GMT

Hi Autodesk Sales Team,
I paid over the last decades approx. 15-20k$ to AD for keeping my 3dsMax up to date (and some more for VRay + PlugIns). The last years there was not significant improvement regarding new cutting edge tools or a long awaited totally new UI concept.

So tell me why do I have to pay for an Adobe subscription of the Master Collection with a bunch of perfect synchronized programs like Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, AfterEffects, Premiere, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, Lighteoom,.............+100GB free cloud storage, free fonts, etc. only 50 Euros per month and greedy Autodesk takes 200$/month for more than 20 year old 3D program (and no cloud rendering access)?!? Next year 250$ or 500$ per month?

I'am very dissapointed and stopped any further updates. This Autodesk strategy leads me finally to move to another 3D solution next time like Modo. You could learn from Pixologic and how fair and close they are to their community (clients would be the wrong word)

If your plan is to let only every day user or companys like Blur Studios, EA & Co. on your clients list this is the right direction.

Regards
Thomas Heidenberger xspace creative Munich

Re: toooooo much money for 3dsMax subscription

CatsChaiTea — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 19:31:58 GMT

Thank you Thomas for sharing your reaction to our changes and for your many years of being our customer. We are always evaluating our pricing strategy and no less so during this time of transition. Customer feedback is very important as we tune our pricing strategy. Keep an eye out for promotions that will make the price more attractive during our transition.

Re: toooooo much money for 3dsMax subscription

th — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 23:34:17 GMT

Many thanks for yor friendly reply.

Last words from my side. The market has changed dramatically over the last decades and international competition grows. Creative budgets decreases. So Autodesk do the same and decreases their marketing budgets, give jobs to countries like Russia, China and India to save money and raise the profit to have good quarterly results for their investors, sell their software now direct without vendor commission fees, don't have to print thick books (I loved the colorful first ver. 1.0 books) or have to press CD Roms/ program USB.sticks, build and ship packages around the world...

Imagine that your users would buy a 100$ 3dsMax 100% compatible full version from China- if it would be available... maybe one time 😉

It's time for a dramatic rethinkig regarding AD's pricing philosophy and follow the Adobe Master Collection pricing strategy. 50€/month for a single product like 3dsMax/month should be more than enough otherwise the access is limited to the top 100 game developer only.

Please don' get me wrong. Max is a great software but at the moment I think I got stuck in R2014. 🙂

Best regards
Thomas

Mit freundlichen Grüßen | with best regards

Thomas Heidenberger
Geschäftsführer | General Manager

xspace GmbH
Am Bauernwald 23e
81739 München
T +49 (0) 92 56 54 88
M +49 (0) 151 22 666 711
www.x-space.de
www.facebook.com/xspace

Re: toooooo much money for 3dsMax subscription

istan — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 20:01:38 GMT

Honestly, my clients will not accept this change - especially when the annual fee will not change dramatically. Either AD finds a special license procedure for such customers like me or we have to quit using 3dsMax. Sorry to say, but then AD will immediately lose >200 customers.

And, as I am sure that others will decide same, this will result in EOL of 3dsMax anyway. On the other hand, if you watch the forums (esp. the development boards), 3dsMax phases out since AD aquired Maya. Maybe I missed this exit already.

Istan

Re: toooooo much money for 3dsMax subscription

Anonymous — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 07:12:39 GMT

Lol, another slap in the face of existing customers. Customers that made autodesk as it is today.

A product like 3dsmax that doesnt get its strengths from the core but rather from plugins like vray, thinkbox, Sitni, the countless other plugins and scripts that make up for the flaws... Years have passed and the oh so necessary core rewrite has still not happened, yet you keep buying those plugins to bulk up and disguise an old architecture. Pflow is still single threaded ? C'mon guys, seriously, what are the other 71 cores doing in my 20K$ machine ????

This decision will surely make you loose a lot of existing customers if you keep this pricing strategy, I mean people that invested for years in your software, paying the bills of your programmers, paying for the growth of your company. You lost sight of who's actually investing in your company, it's not your shareholders, how will you explain to them you have no customers left ? Translate that one in profits for a minute...

It's not that you have a monopoly on the 3d industry, look around at your competitors, C4D, houdini FX, modo, so stop behaving like you do.

In meantime a lot of the best max plugins are available for other software like Cinema4D that comes free as a lite version with my 50$ subscription from Adobe, I'll be more then happy to start investing in them with money & know-how.

Consider me as client -1. And I sincerely hope a lot of others will follow to make you realise you need to get rid of your god complex.

Re: toooooo much money for 3dsMax subscription

spacefrog_ — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 11:27:39 GMT

On the other hand, if you watch the forums (esp. the development boards), 3dsMax phases out since AD aquired Maya. Maybe I missed this exit already.

Istan

responding to that specific statement:

That definiely is not true. There was a dissruption in Max development when Ken Pimentel left, a short time PM appeared and diappeared and a specific mid managment position was favoring Maya over Max. Those issues have been fixed, the mid manamagment is different now and fully supports Max. And being on Maya and Max beta, i can assure you that great development progress happens on both sides, me favorising Max of course

But in general, i think this is not the forum to bring this debate over to

On the topic:

i find the rental/desktup subscription prices for Max ( guess they are the same for Maya ) totally INSANE. Nobody would ever pick that up on that price ...

Re: toooooo much money for 3dsMax subscription

istan — Sat, 27 Jun 2015 22:05:37 GMT

Depends on how you compare it. Since sparks shut down, the support has gone and even Laniers board is dead since Years. We at least are already in the decision phase to which other non-AD product we'll switch.

Re: toooooo much money for 3dsMax subscription

spacefrog_ — Mon, 29 Jun 2015 06:17:17 GMT

AFAIK Lanier is directly working for Autodesk now ...

Istan:

may i ask what plugins you develop for 3ds Max ?

Just curious , as i read that "Developing with 3dsMax SDK since Max V3.0.. " tagline in your user profile

As i am an old timer too ( in Max's regard) that would be very intersting ...

Re: toooooo much money for 3dsMax subscription

istan — Sat, 25 Jul 2015 12:39:51 GMT

Since the 3dsMax programmer macrocosm is so small, we already met in real life with our real names..

Re: toooooo much money for 3dsMax subscription

spacefrog_ — Sun, 26 Jul 2015 07:20:41 GMT

Ah ahh ... using your quote about "loosing >200 customers" line above i now already can figure out who you are 😉

Indeed - if i'm right with my assumption, non-perpetual licensing seems to be a no-go for the way you and your customers use the licenses

Re: toooooo much money for 3dsMax subscription

istan — Sun, 26 Jul 2015 12:47:28 GMT

😉 you're right with your assumption.

Blender could be an alternative, if there would be more export/import options.

Re: toooooo much money for 3dsMax subscription

AllenJessup — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 12:36:02 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:

I'am very dissapointed and stopped any further updates.

If you have a current perpetual licence on a maintenance subscription and keep up the subscription. Then nothing will change for you unless you need to have additional licensed. Unless they're treating Max differently than other programs.

Allen

Re: toooooo much money for 3dsMax subscription

javier_nuniez — Fri, 25 Sep 2015 15:03:55 GMT

Hello Thomas,

I agree with you. In my opinion, in the near future we will see how the number of 3dsMax users decreases.

And I still cannot see how I am going to benefit from this license change. I know it is only for new licenses. What I am concerned about is that less people buying licenses could lead to less money for new development, so even less people buying new licenses... At the end no one will be happy.

I think Autodesk should encourage people to use their packages if they want to keep the bussines and I do not think this to be the way.

We will see.

Javier

Re: toooooo much money for 3dsMax subscription

th — Fri, 25 Sep 2015 17:37:45 GMT

Hi Allen,

thanks you for your reply. I think I have spent enough money for subscriptions the last 20 years. As you might know the perpetual licence systen will be end soon. I had a longer and friendly discussion with a responsible from Autodesk M&E team Munich. I can understand that Autodesk 3dsMax is not a "everybody" solution like Photoshop and needs some money for development but honestly spoken I cannot recognize any dramtical redesign of the UI or reprogramming in basic features. Where is the money gone?

For me it is not a real development to add moving people to a scene (and as well they don´t look realistic) or getting existing 20$ chamfer plugins intergrated into Max. The last updates were lousy. Maybe some game developers see that different but I am not working for the gaming industry. Further I don´t want to pay for the Autodesk overhead.

Further I spent additional hundreds for Euros for Vray (should be standard in 3dsMax - not mental ray), Phoenix, Forest Pack, Railclone, and many other feature that I expected to get as an paying user from Autodesk.

At the moment I work with 2014 and stopped all plugin updates. I will work with Max as long as it make sense. Then I will see what comes next. Modo, Blender?

I don´t change opinion and think 50 Euro/month would be more than enough.

Best

Thomas

Re: toooooo much money for 3dsMax subscription

th — Fri, 25 Sep 2015 17:42:28 GMT

Hi Javier,

I totally agree with you. 3D is no more a niche product. If Autodesk don´t understand that fair prices and a resulting huge user amount is the future they will loose against Adobe. I am sure that Adobe is working on a full CC integrated 3D solution. Let us see.

Best
Thomas

Re: toooooo much money for 3dsMax subscription

spacefrog_ — Sat, 26 Sep 2015 06:34:46 GMT

@th:

I know this is not the correct forum, but still i can't resist to respond - so this is somehow OT:
When you stopped updating with Max 2014 you actually stopped right at the moment when Max development finally gained traction again.Max 2014 was okay, Max 2015 was good, but Max 2016 is an exceptionally GREAT release and a huge performance beast. And it's rich with new features. Features for all folks, not only benefiting a specific crowd ( BTW the games crowd - where i'm partly in - did'nt recieve anything for years). Additionally i know that development is going at a speed and effort like i never have seen before ( i'm on the Beta since 2008 )

So essentially, Autodesk is shooting itself into the foot once again, by killing that little regrowing plant of regained trust in it's commitment to 3ds Max but at the same time shifting to this rental only idiocy.
Autodesk should not forget that customer trust in them is and was on a tipping point for years since the Softimage debacle and the non-progress and chaotic product manager situation with 3ds Max

Regarding the M&E guy you talked to in Munich: You will never hear the truth about the money flow from anybody at Autodesk. It's clear that revenue streams from one product are cross-financing "experiments" and other products, but thats not always a bad thing. I guess the whole M&E department itself is somehow crossfinanced by the huge engineering and CAD realm of Autodesk. AFAIK M&E is only some single digit percent number in Autodesk's revenue ...

But finally:
You are ultimately right about the monthly 3ds Max rent price, its far far over the top . I think i said it already in a post somewhere above : no sane person would/should rent Max for that price tag