It is good to see Blender doing well, gaining a strong following and seeing Toby moving away because of subs should send shivers down Maxons back. Houdini latest release has a ton of features, they are improving their modeling tools, they release bug fixes, some times on a weekly basis and do release a .5 version (remember those?) about 5 months later. I am really starting to get hang of procedural modeling, it really makes sense and logical. SideFX support is amazing, I emailed an issue I was having Saturday night at 1900 hrs Central US, and within 20 minutes had a response.
C4D is still a really strong package, but with weak release, costly subscription plan and people trying out other packages, MAXON had best up its game to stay in the game.
to quote Dave:
At the pace that Blender is moving, there may be no "long term" horizon that allows MAXON to recoup whatever losses they incur from moving to a subscription plan.
That is a real possibility that MAXON cannot ignore.