"I'd be willing to bet that 3ds and Maya recovered the majority of their deveopment costs years ago. Setting the cost as high as they do only serves to keep the "lower classes" from having access to "professional level" applications. " I've worked with A|W in the past, (and present at times), they keep a huge staff in developement, and the costs to keep the software going, simply in terms of staffing is far higher than the cost of Curious Labs, and Poser. and yes! of course I'm here because I love poser! but I also know that the extra features/continued dev on maya justify it costing 10x as much. It's not the elitest move that you think. It really does cost a ton to upkeep the software. As more users turn to 3d, the larger companies can lower their prices, but it's still set at about the right price for the user base.