It seems to have plateaued and increasing more slowly. Combining data from Steam and Statcounter reveals this:
Yes, but we’re talking about 2 different moments. 3D software was in it’s infancy in the 90’s. Things were evolving rapidly, and you’re paying a premium for basically developing prototypes. Every innovation, additional competitor, or even merger will likely bring prices down.
More comparable to today’s desktop/software market, is after autodesk gobbled up the market in the 2000’s. They might offer discounts on bundles after acquiring a new software, but then they’d often stagnate or abandon development shortly thereafter and they gradually made moves to spend very little on dev while continuing to charge customers. So autodesk’s actions were hardly a consumer (prosumer?) victory. I’m simply saying they were increasingly hostile to their customers until blender became competitive.
