#Animation Master
To look at this another way, what's the lowest price you'd pay for an IPAS?
Obviously, some people have given away IPASes for free. But when someone buys
commercial software, they not only get the program itself, and probably paper
documentation, but tech support, continuing development, reasonably rapid bug
fixes, etc. That's the gap between free software commercial software. Sure,
there are examples of generous and beneficent freeware and shareware authors,
but once you start charging for software, customers expect a certain amount of
service.
In sub-markets like this (that is, among third-party developers of IPAS
routines), the volume of sales and the profit from those sales require
relatively hgh-priced add-ons.
Another interesting question: when you lower the price of the main product, be
it 3D Studio or any of the sub-$1000 3D packages, it gets even tougher to
develop plug-ins and yet maintain a price that lets you survive.