It really depends on your 'license' with them. For me as an individual it is basically 'free'. As the community edition is basically pro in all but name. But

It really depends on your 'license' with them. For me as an individual it is basically 'free'. As the community edition is basically pro in all but name. But for a corp env it is like you say it is not 'trivial expensive'. They mowed down everyone else because it was that choice for a long time. You were talking 20-30k per year per dev in the 90s for some stacks. 150-500 per year was a bargain by that metric. But now there are 5 other IDEs you can pick from that are either cheaper or free. In some cases for some langs the cheaper ones are better in all respects. In some cases they are charging anywhere from 500-9k per year depending on how you buy it. Why would I start a greenfield project with VS in that sort of env, unless I was already a 'MS shop'? VS is nice, and one of the better IDEs but by comparison it is wildly overpriced.