To still hide behind the awesomeness of resellers seems strange given their track-record. I already cited the "European Softimage Subscription Event" (to coin a phrase) as a clear example. As long as it's Autodesk that ultimately gets most of my money, they should either inform me directly or make sure (100% sure) all resellers send out this kind of information to everyone, instead of just a few resellers doing so. If Autodesk can ensure that resellers do absolutely send all vital information (and pricing and policy change do fit that bill, I'd say, and aren't the same as the mere "offers" you mention) to all of their customers, they can gladly leave it to the resellers. Until then, however...

And BTW, yes, I obviously meant "relatively cheap", when I claimed "mail is cheap", sorry for being so inaccurate...


But there seems to be no point discussing this much further, I'm afraid,
as we are quite obviously at two different sides of the "fence" on this...

I'm not sure its hiding as such, and I'm not defending or championing the channel either, but seeing as Autodesk stills does a great deal of business though their channel (distributors and resellers), they no doubt see the need to involve them in this process.

I understood your meaning about email being cheap, but I did once ask about this myself and the mechanisms involved and I was surprised at the costs. It's not as simple as putting together a mailing list in Outlook, even though I wish it was.

So is this just another rumor, someone's idea of a bad joke or the truth?


The second part seems to be true, it's what we talked about in this thread
(well actually we talked about 70%, which was the percentage mentioned by 3D Cyberdream),
how about the increase in the price of maintenance/subscription (in Europe)?

The lack of response to my serious question is quite significant.
Case closed as far as I'm concerned!

It is a good way to earn a lot of money or to kill SI ....

That has probably come from someone's reseller as I know a lot of the resellers have been calling out and pushing the fact that there is an upgrade promo now and that next year upgrade pricing will be going up to appox 70% of the cost of a new licence.

As for the other matter, price changes don't normally happen during a quarter, but there can often be announcements before the next quarter. However that isn't a confirmation or denial of anything and either way I must also tread carefully legally. Also, and honestly I simply don't know as at present no news has filtered to me yet.

Not exactly the unequivocal denial I was (secretly) hoping for, obviously, but thanks for your reply!

I said this on the mailing forum, and I say it again here,

With the current economy, what dimwit at the AD office is RAISING prices??????

It's the best way to drive people away, at least until the economy picks up again.

Or start looking for cheaper alternatives. In both cases, bad for business and Softimage in general.

Um, I believe that the economic difficulties are affecting everyone, AD stockholders included. As a consequence their profits probably decreased so they had to find a solution to at least keep them in line. Pure speculation of course, but based on keen observation of national and private economic mechanics over time. If this is the case, it's simply a bad business decision as history clearly shows to anyone interested into investigating.

Well, although any price increase would hurt me a lot personally ATM, the main problem I have with all this is that all these planned policy changes and price increases are not transparent. The whole "ask your reseller" concept is nonsensical. Autodesk should be upfront with their decisions/the details of changed policies or raised prices. This is not something I as a client should have to ask for specifically. If your reseller feels like handing out this information beforehand, you know what's coming. If your reseller doesn't feel the need to give you this information, you're technically "scr**ed". Autodesk should end this inequality by giving this information to all its clients in a clear and timely manner...
/rant (and admittedly a broken record!)