Sad news indeed! Switching to alternative software is easier said than done.
There are alternatives that adequately (if not better) address specific areas of development. Areas such as Modeling, FX, Rendering and now Lighting with the release of Katana could be handled quite well. There is however one remaining hole that has yet to be filled by another developer, and that's character setup and animation. Running proprietary software comes with its own complications and requires a great deal of resources that are not available to many studios. So at the end of the day the choices are rather limited and another competitor comes along with a commercial package that can be used to replace the big 3 in the area of character setup and animation I believe Autodesk will keep their customers. -- Technical Director @ DreamWorks Animation
