VS2005 Pricing - SNAFU But Not FUBAR

MSFT's recent announcement about VS2005 pricing for MSDN has just about everybody up-in-arms. Larkware (Mike Gunderloy) gives a good pricing analysis and Eric Bowen's insights on how the pricing may hurt MSFT is worth considering.

I believe the reasoning behind the price hike is the support (post-sale) costs of the VS2005 system. So, with that in mind - MSFT may want to reconsider its pricing for MSDN but perhaps, with no or very limited support of VS2005 for the MSDN subscribers. This can be under the umbrella of a 'developer edition'. With the current growth of developer weblogs, numerous websites, newgroups and discussion forums - the MSDN developer ecology may be able to self-sustain itself without (or little) support from MSFT for this product.