I have no idea, but i can give you the answer of my reseller, and many like him after i asked multiple times:

"the prices (wich is almost 40 and in some cases 50% more) in europe is that high because of the people involved into making the product arrive from America"
so since it has to come from USA, many people are involved, tax, stuff etc and magically the price grows up.
This just sounds total bullshit to me, but that was the answer.

Another thing it is totally retarded, due to this fact i was about to buy licenses with digital download in USA, you cant, because since they have to make money, that license is not valid for europe, so you have to spend 50% more because of this retarded system wich is an insult to users.

Why not?
Why rise price? XSI selling seems good so they rise up the price. It is a good sign for SI

In any case, under avid softimage was more expensive (5000 euro advaced, or am I wrong?), now you have integrated Facerobot (a 99000$ plugin... all avid Facerobot customers was very happy after 7.5 release from AD )

I can't comment on pricing, as its not really my area, but I wouldn't say the response given by that reseller is an accurate one.
With pricing and especially in Europe, Autodesk and other companies have to adhere to many rules and guidelines around cross border trading, anti-competition, pricing, etc. So its these kind of things that will probably have more of an impact.

On the Face Robot thing, well its wasn't just a plugin. Although built upon Softimage (XSI), it was a seperate package. There's always been this continuing myth around its pricing as well. Yes at the very beginning its was up at the 100k mark, but at the time of the Autodesk acquisition and even a couple of years before that, it wasn't anything like that.

@Bellsey - you are probably right.
Autodesk could however have given us all a little more notice & could have told us with some kind of centralized message. (Not a reseller notice from one German reseller, while my own current reseller for instance hasn't sent any memo yet).
The price increase is quite substantial, not a gradual rise of the pricing over a couple of years, but a one-off increase of more than 30 percent. That seems to be Autodesk's decision, not the EU's.
The idea that you can only buy extra years of subscription for the old price, if your subscription ends within the next three months doesn't necessarily sound very fair to me either.
Hardly anyone seems to notice, that Softimage has once again become the most expensive (exclusive?) software to maintain (not to initially purchase) of the Mighty Threesome (Max, Maya & Softimage), as "we" - for some totally unexplained reason - lack the option of a basic subscription, stuck as we are with the gold variant.
To me personally this price increase (and the way Autodesk didn't tell us, only a German reseller did) will make it hard for me to justify all this money I spend on what's just a hobby to me.
If I sound upset, that's true, but I'm not upset at you...

OT: I start to collect Hirazi avatars



IMHO, AD don't care about hobbyists market. Same (again IMHO) freelance and little studio

I wasn't saying that the EU have made the decision about pricing, I was just pointing out that there's a alot that we have to adhere to, which sometimes means that we have to do certain things and sometimes there's nothing we can do, depending on the issue and context. These types of conditions are not unique to Autodesk, many businesses in the eurozone have similar issues to deal with.

As to the levels of subscription, Softimage only has Gold at the moment, because...as I understand it, this was equivalent to what Softimage offered pre-Autodesk. They didn't offer quite the same tiered system that Autodesk do. Whether Softimage will now start offering that same options as the others, I honestly don't know.
To say that Softimage is not the most expensive, is kinda a skewed view. Yes without the lower tiers of Subs its more, but when matched against the equivalent for Maya and Max, I believe its still slightly cheaper. (Disclaimer -at my last time of checking.)

Nizer - your prorogative, but I don't agree in your observation, especially with freelancers and small studios.

I really don't know why the view I expressed is skewed. If I don't have the option to go for basic subscription, all that remains is more expensive subscription. So to maintain subscription I always necessarily have to pay more than Max or Maya customers, who have the option of basic (i.e. lower priced) subscription. With the new pricing for Softimage gold subscription there is a significant difference between this and the basic subscription of Max and Maya (last time I checked, they were cheaper). You do the math: who is more expensive?
And gold subscription for Softimage might be slightly cheaper than gold subscription for Max and Maya. But lacking the OPTION to buy the basic subscription Softimage is still, in effect, more expensive.

edit: corrected my initial mistaken reading "screwed" instead of "skewed".
Must have been because that's obviously exactly how I feel...

As I wrote, only my opinion, but can you articulate you idea? I see more freelance/little studio oriented software and company like Luxology, LW or Rhino. I understood AD is big company and cannot be like a more agile and small software houde, but final result, to me, is what I have described: AD don't seems so oriented to little studio and freelance.

its 'skewed' because the comparison is not fair and equal. You are comparing 2 different options, one of which is cheaper and isn't available. It's not comparing like for like.
You are kinda splitting hairs, but then so am I.

As I am talking from my personal perspective & am trying to ascertain if Softimage is still worth such a large amount of my very meager income, I really do not think I am splitting hairs. I'm pointing out there are cheaper ways to maintain (not initially buy, like I already stated) Max and Maya. Cheaper ways for their users to stay with the "happy family" of Autodesk. Good old XSI Foundation couldn't be compared with Maya Ultimate (or whatever it was called at the time), but it was cheaper. (Yes it was!)
The lack of understanding from Autodesk employees is understandable I guess.
Relunctantly, I will have to look into other options now.

PS and a complete aside: Funny, how you failed to mention hobbyists BTW. As we don't make any money with the product, you could, in a potentially skewed way, point out the software costs us the most (so we buy it, only because we "love it so much")