I thought a while about this. While I understand your feelings I also think, it is not the right decision from the business point of view.

Monopoly:
Using tools from the leading (monopoly) company never is a bad idea. Most customers are using it, many developers are using it. You have a good base, a big knowledge base.

C#1.1 only:
While this is only a little issue for a programmer, it is no issue at all for your end user. The gamer, playing your game, is not interested in namespaces. The game matters in the end. And C# 1.1 is still better than all these script languages.

let it grow up:
I see no other indie engine with more platforms supported. And there is probably no better workflow.
It will grow up but then it will be more killer than it already is.

At the end it is really hard competition to all indie engines. GarageGames and Torque is comparable to it and now they get free competition. Even free engines like Irrlicht and Ogre3D get quite impressive competition with much better workflow.
This will change the market for sure.

At Dexsoft we have to support Unity models and packages more than we did in the past. Most indie developers will be there in the future.

I was surprised to read the reasons why they are giving Unity for free
It seems that the cash flow generated by the the Indie version was negligible
In other word a lot of the Unity3d users own the Pro version
Strange, I guess that for 3dgs it is the other way round

Apart form that Unity has still a main issue , in my opinion,
It supports FBX file format only
I have been replied by the moderator tha it is not a problem
"We have many happy clients ",he said," our FBX importer is perfect"
"If you go trough your " external tools " forum ", I said," you see that you have also many sad clients "

If you check the 2.6 bug list you can see that also some FBX
issues have been fixed

I hope tha now the FBX importer really works
On the other hand I am sorry for 3dgs
It can not really compete unless it dramatically improve

I have alwayes been on 3dgs side, but this is the plain truth

I love acknex It brought me to game development as a hobby I really hope that all this good comments about unity brings the acknex engine team to improve, it's sad to see that an engine who was originally just for mac now is getting a big piece of the win users to use their engine. but hey conitec exists so much years now they will not give up so easy I'm sure A8 will be a bigger thing and maybe more modern oriented to the way of gamemaking today, go with the time or better more than that
but sure unity is far away from the "perfect" engine. But as long as they have more customers that are happy than sad, everthing is fine for them. And most indie developers don't even need all those state of the art features, all they need is a good workflow with the software they work and a nice game idea, because they make often something different than most of fullprice games.

JCL wrote in the Conitec forum section, that A7 will develop a bit slower because Conitec is part of a MMO game production now. They will concentrate on this customer project.

I still have no 100% clear opinion about this mmo game production, if it ends good ( and I hope it will) than it will be a good publicity for this engine, if not than time will become a problem. But maybe this could led them bring to redesign the engine itself for the further Version, soon or later it should be the goal to make a rough change to the engine. Maybe after the project they have more money to pay new engineer experts and we get a better product in future.

Maybe I´m to dumb but I can´t get the hang to unity.
I´ve bought Indie in the beginning of the year, but it´s not my world.

I got the hang to flash, in two weeks. A lot of people consider flash to be a nightmare.
Well, maybe I´m just strange.

seems JCL is releasing the extra version as freeware, good move, but if the community members increase, they'll just get alot more complaints about not the limited engine features but the quality of the features

Well Gamestudio is about as good as dead. The ONLY way gamestudio could at this point compete with Unity will be by offering it's Pro version at a very discounted price , maybe something like $199 , where Unity is still over $1000. Cuz NOBODY in their right mind would buy Pro Gamestudio over Pro Unity , but maybe if Conitec offers Gamestudio Pro for $199 some (not me) people could be "fooled" into buying it. Still , I think most indie game engines are going to fall , xept maybe Torque (they have Xbox 360 support ect...) , but I think this move by Unity is going to be devastating to most other indie commercial game engines. Just my 2 cents , from somebody who's used GameStudio and various other engines for some years now.

Unity is full of nice features but I can't compete with ogre for example in terme of optimisation and speed. You are limited to some small game and iphone app and maybe I4m the only one to think that way but iphone app s***. anyway this is not the point. Gamestudio could compete with unity just by making a more powerfull game engine and give up on lite-c. Nobody want to learn a syntax just for one engine, there is many other way. MAybe scripting should be limited to lite-c.

People would say ease of use is important yea you are right but if you can achieve something incredibly nice most developpers aren't that relectant to put some effort. A7 is not my first choice beacuse even if you put a lot effort in developing your game won't change the fact the graphics will be kind of poor or the engine will be unoptimised.

So yeah why not bright it to next level a next gen engine like c4 but using something else than c++ c# for instance.

"Gamestudio could compete with unity just by making a more powerfull game engine"
Well yeah , Gamestudio could beat Unity if it were to release A8 and it were some kind of beast full of new and handy features that would make Unity feel outdated. Only problem is , Unity did that exact same thing to Gamestudio a couple of years ago , and now it has given it's indie version for free , obliterating most of the current competition (I would say all), a very strategic and smart move by Unity I would say.

But could Gamestudio stay competitive with A8 ? Of course.
Do I think it will ? Of course not.
Is Unity the new king of indie engines ? In my opinion , definitely , for the time being at least , as no one knows what the future will bring.