Mark Serrels, editor over at Kotaku AU, has raised the issue of the pricing disparity with Autodesk software for Australian games developers, where the industry standard applications such as 3DS Max and Maya are priced each at $3,675 (US) (or roughly $3,579 AU) for customers based in the United States, but a $1596 markup for the same software is added if you're Australian ($5,175 (AU)).
The issue of software pricing disparity has been a fairly hot topic in Australia recently with the news that Apple, Adobe, Microsoft are to be summoned before a public hearing next month to explain why their products were priced so high for Australian consumers. In the past, finding real answers for pricing differences has been difficult to get, with amicable attempts made to get official responses regarding Australia's high cost of games and productivity software, and it's of little surprise that Serrels faces the same problem for his Kotaku feature.
Australian games developers, especially those in a studio environment, already face many challenges in the current games development climate, from the near-non existant work-for-hire model to the high Aussie dollar, and are at an even more unfair disadvantage when the software they require is at such a huge markup per seat. We're hoping that the issue Kotaku AU raises here brings more awareness to real and viable alternatives in game development software such as Blender, especially with the rise of independent games development in Australia.
While it's true that Blender isn't as sophisticated or feature rich as the more popular 3DS Max and Maya solutions, it's still a very capable alternative for producing game assets and animation. Take a close look a BlenderGuru's character rigging tutorial in Blender (narrated and instructed by former Krome Studios animator, Lee Salvemini) to see how useful Blender can be for game production. Or check out Sintel or Tears of Steal, two highly impressive shortfilms that showcase Blender's capabilities in 3D animation and visual effects.