My reply is here. BTW, major CG packages like Autodesk Maya and 3DS Max were at the level of $5000 and below for over a decade.
I've been out of circulation for a while. Last time I priced Autodesk, was in the early 90s, and it was still tens of thousands. I'm just now getting caught up to basic AutoCAD, and I hope to begin learning 3DS Max and Maya in the next year or so. I am astounded at how cheap these packages are now (and how wrong one of my best friends is/was about how quickly these types of software would be available. In 1989, he said it would be 30 to 40 years before we saw the types of graphics displays & software that were pretty much common by (I have discovered) 1995)... Thanks for the head's up though.
I would like to propose this as a thread for people to write in their predictions for the next year and the next decade, when practical with probabilities attached. I'll probably make some in the comments.