I wont provide you with actual numbers, because they are irrelevant, but I will
absolutlely support your claim with actual experience on a gammers platform. The
money and man power that goes into developing games ( especially games that run
on multiple platforms) is staggering. "Skull Monkeys" for example, consumed
thousands of man-hours and several million dollars just to get it out of alpha
stage - and it runs on an existing engine - no new innovative technology here -
yet still, unnbelievable overhead to just get started. I can only imagine that
math intensive software - with faultless memory regulation - that must run on
unique engines has to have an upfront cost that would boggle the mind.
KB-

Johannes Hubert wrote:

> Scott McDonald wrote in message <37193873.8F4B0122@metrolink.com>...
> >Lance Birch wrote:
> >>
> >> Hmm, let me think... It's illegal?
> >>
> >> Personally I hate people that pirate MAX... mainly because it raises the
> >> price for me... and also because I'm sick of seeing terrible work made
> with
> >
> >naw, thats a convenient excuse for Autodesk to charge a ridiculous
> >amount of money for it.
> [snip]
>
> Crap!
>
> This is one of the dumbest but unfortunately most used arguments in the
> discussion about pirate copies.
>
> And it just isn't true!
>
> Mark well, I don't want to defend the price of MAX here in particular (I am
> certain that part of the money you pay goes into the "image" and the "name"
> of the product, just as SGI workstations or Apple Computers [or many other
> high-tech prodcuts from elite-brands - anyone bought a pair of Nike shoes
> lateley? See, you paid for the image too!] are not really worth the money
> they cost - if you simply add up the cost for the hardware components.
>
> The point I want to make is, that software is not expensive because software
> firms are asking ridiculous prices which they only can get away with because
> there is no alternative. In reality, software is so expensive because it
> simply *is* very expensive to develop.
> Especially such large projects as MAX. I would guess (totally without
> underlying facts, but close to the truth I guess) that there easily went
> several centuries of man-work into the development of MAX. (A small team of
> 25 working for 4 years would already add up to one century!)
> And the people developing the software are not some underpaid and exploited
> third-world "slaves" but highly educated professionals that, justily, demand
> good money for good work. Add this together with the costs for promotion
> etc., and you will soon see why a software that is sold in such
> (comparativly) small numbers as MAX will always cost a *lot*.
>
> And Lance is right:
>
> Kinetix is putting effort (and money!) into developing protection (dongles
> etc.) which they wouldn't need in a perfect world. It is clear that at the
> end the customer pays for this added costs.
> This doesn't even count the lost revenues from pirated software that was not
> sold (and therefor did not add to the total income made with the product).
>
> Johannes.

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