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Alias In Acquisition Talks With Private Equity Firm
TeachingMachines writes "Alias, the makers of the venerable Maya 3D animation and effects software, have announced their possible sale to an unnamed 3rd party, described as a 'leading private equity investment firm'. Alias is currently owned by SGI, and the transaction is still considered to be tentative. I, for one, hope that SGI holds onto Alias, as in its current state it is arguably the best 3D modelling and animation suite available, and it is available for Linux. Cross your fingers..."
I think Maya is one of the most revolutionary products in software history not just for its tech capabilities, but the way they sell it.
To curb piracy of their full value product, they released a Personal Learn Edition that made all the features of the full product available, but put on a watermark that made the output useless for commercial use and encrypted the saved files so that the commerical version would not open them. Those who designed something and then sold it, however, could send their encrypted file in when they purchase their license to get it converted to a file their full version could open and output without the watermark. They also offered a $20 how-to DVD for those who wanted to learn the program with a minimal outlay of money.
They also made what could be the most dramatic price cut in software history, knocking their entry-level product's price from $7,500 to $1,999 and taking their high-level product from $16,000 to $7000. Clearly, they made it up on volume.
So, not only was this a great technical program, but it became priced so that even moderately-funded producers could afford the program, and therefore made it accessable to the people who needed it. I just hope these unnamed investors don't raise the prices back to where they were...