The Mac version of Maya was developed in India where the talent is waaaaaaaay cheaper than Canada or the USA. Maya retailing at 2K while developed in India will probably have a higher profit margin than 3DSMax developed in Canada/USA. The folks at A|W said they're gonna outsource more of their efforts to India, so that's how they're able to drop the price so low. Whether they can make the money back, as you've pointed out, remains to be seen.
My only assumption at this point is that A|W is banking on film/video companies being the ones to make the biggest purchases with hopes of later swaying game houses to do the same. With the price so low and houses giving XSI a good look, a price drop makes the choice a no-brainer as they can now get the Mental Ray plugin (if they want it) and still pay less than purchasing an XSI Essentials license.
Large studios such as Digital Domain usually employ the least-cost software per task in the movie pipeline. Modellers use Lightwave, previz maybe uses Max, while the other facets may use Softimage or Maya. Well, with price drop, these large studios no longer have to pick n' choose, but can go all with one package and eliminate the hassles of writing glue code to convert data from one pipeline to another. Also reduces the amount of plugins that have to be written as the tools wouldn't have to be duplicated for three different platforms. So, DD, SKG, ILM, Sony, etc... that's a lot of seats should they act on the opportunity. If the big guys go all Maya, then guess what: their outsources and freelancers will have to go all Maya too. The ol' classic domino effect. The little guy isn't going to make much of a dent in A|W sales on his own, it's the big guys that force the little guys hands that'll make the effort work. While this price drop is advertised as a move towards the mass market, it's actually a coup of the major studios in the making. The price drop will not make joe animator buy Maya to make it a mass market product, but the switching over of the big studios to push their affiliates to use Maya and eventually trickle down will. Smart tactic.
I think XSI is primed to be the better product as it addresses many workflow issues that aren't addressed in other softwares. You could get a bucket full of cheaper products to save money on the upfront purchase, but when it comes to the number of hours spent get the job done, you should consider workflow and the tool's capabilities as man-hours cost more than software.
Matt
Matt Lind
Animator / Technical Director
Softimage certified instructor:
Softimage|3D
Softimage|XSI
speye_21@hotmail.com