Clearly the current Chaos/Enscape information void lends itself to a great deal of speculative talk fueled by the healthy diversity of many points of view.
I think the liveliness of the conversations, as entertaining as it is, falls short of addressing the basic concern we all have in common - price strategy after the merger.
I often wonder whether I will be able to afford Enscape + Chaos in a few years or exclusively rely on my company to provide the necessary software, like is currently the case with Autodesk applications. And I am lucky, my company gladly acquires the resources I need to do my job.
It is a huge disappointment that after spending thousands of my own dollars on "permanent licenses" one finds the rug pulled under our feet by the pay-as-you-go subscription schemes so ubiquitous these days.
I get it! It makes sense from a business standpoint (if you are on the corporate side of the equation), for others, especially the small entrepreneurs in the business of visualization, it creates a perpetual need to compete on price until one gets priced out of the market, or worse, people resorting to software piracy.
The impact of escalating prices is devastating on the small entrepreneurs everywhere and threatens to wipe out many of us who used to earn a side income providing cool looking visualizations after hours.
That said, I would give Enscape and Chaos the benefit of the doubt and simply wait until better information is made available to the public directly from them.
In the meantime I keep my Rhino 3D license current and I am sharpening my Blender skills just in case.