I wonder if they had enough of a sales increase dropping from $25k to $12k to even make an estimate of the price elasticity of demand. Clearly their executives are ignorant of the fact that profits depend entirely on that and unit cost. The fact that you spent a gazillion dollars developing the product is irrelevant. You ain't gettin' any of it back if you don't sell any! I went through this with an associate who was marketing a Pascal compiler I had some input on back in the days of CP/M and Z80 computers. He insisted that $350 was the right price. Some guy named Phil came along with an upstart company called Borland and offered one nearly as good for $50. It's interesting. Practically the only software company that actually seems to pay attention to these marketing factors is Microsoft! You'd think by now some others would get the general idea. I use displacement maps all the time. Much more realistic than bump mapping (though both have their places). I've been using the Brycetech bump maps with some success and use the built-in fractal noise for home-brew skins. Another thing is that textures can now be layered and combined using color math. It's easy as pie to stick a tatoo on a model (or any other kind of mark, such as dirt smears, blood, etc.).