The last time there was a thread about Xamarin on here the top comment was complaining about the cost of a license, several weeks later they announce monthly pricing.
Now the complaint is we don't get Visual Studio support with indie pricing. Seriously folks? I am not trying to be a Xamarin apologist but the company has to make money and find a model somewhere that makes sense - putting VS support in an up-level SKU makes all the sense in the world if you follow the trends.
Look at it this way, the majority of Xamarin customers who want Visual Studio support are businesses for whom the cost of the licenses is irrelevant in the larger picture (I dont want to provide a math lesson but if they x-plat savings are manifest, the ROI on the licenses is near immediate). That is where Xamarin can find the margin to support the lower tiers. If they had the ability to support the entire company on $25/developer/year then I venture they would because there is value for them right now not in taking profit but in growing the developer base. Alas they are not doing that which tells me they are finding customers in the enterprise more than willing to pay for their product. In order to get TRIPLE the revenue per customer they add one specific sweet spot that they know nearly all those customers want - Visual Studio support. If they put that in the lower tiers they nuke their margins because it is the feature that matters most to the enterprise dev teams who are often filled with people who know and enjoy visual studio above other environments. It also enables them to not purchase a secon machine (mac) for each of these developers which gets beyond the hardware and licensing costs and has an effective cost on IT operations.
So yes, it would be nice if Visual Studio support were included in the indie tier - but it would not be prudent. Besides, how many 'indie' developers do you know are actually completely dependent on Visual Studio? I love Visual Studio and half my consulting revenue comes from the hours I spend in it - but the other half of my time which is usually spent doing mobile development is done in Xamarin Studio because - surprise, it is really pretty good.