Alias|Wavefront(tm), an SGI company, announced that a lower standard list price of its highly popular Maya(r) 3D animation software comes into effect today. Maya Complete(tm), formerly priced at $7,500 will now sell for $1,999* and Maya Unlimited(tm), which formerly sold for $16,000 will be priced at $6,999*. The repricing marks the companyis decision to position Maya as a volume market software, thereby giving more people access to the worldis leading 3D content creation package.
"This repositioning has been two years in the making," states Alias|Wavefront, General Manager, Bob Bennett. "During that time we listened carefully to consumer demand, implemented new technology, and made changes to our internal infrastructure. Today we have the industry recognition, the necessary support systems and the right product at the right price for the volume software marketplace."
In conjunction with this repricing the company is aligning its support and operating systems policies to be consistent with that of volume software products. New maintenance and upgrade offerings include: pay per upgrade (version or product), free online support, single incident support and reduced cost "annual full maintenance". New licensing policies will also come into effect today which, among other things, give Maya Unlimited customers with floating licenses the right to operate on any Alias|Wavefront qualified operating system at no additional charge.
Alias|Wavefront is also offering an upgrade special at this time to its current customers on annual full maintenance whereby those customers with licenses of Maya Complete for the IRIX(r), Linux(r) or Windows(r) platforms can upgrade to Maya Unlimited for $1,499. The offer is available until June 28, 2002. The recent repricing is one of many strategies implemented by Alias|Wavefront in the past year to position Maya as a volume market product. In April, 2001 the company shipped the Maya Shockwave 3D Exporter(tm) and later Maya Real Time Author(tm), aimed at the web graphics market. The company then followed this up with the release of its Maya for Mac(r) OS X product in September 2001 and the free Maya Personal Learning Edition(tm) at the end of February. All of these new offerings have been very well received by their target markets, most particularly Maya Personal Learning Edition which 100,000 people have downloaded in the six weeks since its launch.
You can find more information on Maya at the Alias|Wavefront Web site.