Dwight wrote:
Fair enough, but ArchiCAD IS sold as a complete package.
This package SHOULD contain a contemporary rendering capacity.
My initial thought was 'well, then ArchiCAD would have to cost about as much as ArchiCAD + Artlantis (say, a 30% increase in its cost-per-year), and since not every ArchiCAD user today cares about rendering, or caring about rendering actually prefers Artlantis, that would hurt ArchiCAD by rising its price in order to include a feature only a small part of its user base would value --it would hurt a lot and benefit a little'.
But upon closer inspection of that reasoning, I started wondering if maybe precisely because today not all ArchiCAD users are Artlantis purchasers Graphisoft and Abvent could reach a deal that would make sense for both. If the annual cost of ArchiCAD price went up by say 15% and ArchiCAD included the functionality of Artlantis R out of the box, maybe Abvent could make more money from its ArchiCAD user base than it does now. And a 15% increase in exchange for out of the box Artlantis R functionality I think would be more than justified for every user.
Then of course I figure Revit could want to get a similar deal from Abvent. Which would mean even more money for Abvent. Unless Graphisoft or Revit wants an exclusive deal. Which is a discussion Abvent may not want to go into. And also because they would have to be somehow involved in the integration process --a bad integration would kill the benefits of integration, and the user who has already 'paid for' Artlantis R in a messed up CAD package would go for some other rendering package instead of purchasing an Artlantis standalone. So probably it makes more sense to keep Artlantis marketing identity etc.
I think I have come to agree with myself.
