@toyxyz
Thanks for the price list table. The US price lists were similar in proportion but lifted in amounts for dollars. (The US perpetual license for C4D is $3495.)
It’s worth noting is to version upgrade a perpetual license of C4D from R23 or later to R25 is 29% of a new perpetual license, which is greater than a year of just subscribing. If you fall off their perpetual license treadmill, they really sock it to you with a whopping 62% of a new perpetual license to get back on.
An annual subscription runs about 21% of a perpetual license, so five years of subscribing is more or less the equivalent of one, un-upgraded version of the perpetual license. Assuming you get 1 yr. of free updates with your perpetual license, you’d need to another 80% (or more) in maintenance costs to keep your perpetual license up to date over five years.
For five years of C4D use, this means you’re at somewhere north of 180% of the perpetual license cost for the privilege of a perpetual license and 100 to 105% of the perpetual license cost to just subscribe. (Admittedly you’re vulnerable to price increases by subscribing, but I am assuming they will similarly raise the maintenance prices.)
Unless you use C4D all the time, they are driving you to a subscription. If you start adding Redshift and Red Giant into the mix, the Maxon One subscription looks to be a better 5-year deal. My fear is with the conspicuous lack of details in the Pixologic acquisition, they’re thinking similar.
Of course, this is pure speculation on my part, but having done business with Maxon for more than a decade and lived through their monetization shifts from reasonably priced upgrades to Maxon Service Agreement (now discontinued) to subscribe-or-pay-through-the-nose regardless of how little development for the year (the current model), I am not hopeful. I think this acquisition will be very good for people in the Maxon universe where C4D is their main platform, but sadly for artists, hobbyists, or anyone where C4D is not their main platform, it’s likely to be a loss in terms of costs.
Since Pixologic doesn’t discuss roadmap (nor do I expect them to start now) only future will be able to say if there is more or less investment in functionality over the next five years. My bet is that functionality will continue to improve for at least while, but tilt into the Maxon universe. Maxon would be crazy to blow this chance to get into more developers & studios where Zbrush is already a sculpting mainstay.
I sincerely hope Maxon will prove me wrong, and this will mark a new phase of artist-friendly pricing, support, and development.