Macromedia announced today the release of Flash Media Server 2 (formerly known as Flash Communication Server). The new FMS2 takes advantage of the new video codec packaged with Flash 8 (the on2 codec), so the video should scream and look great to boot.

Flashcomguru.com's, Stefan Richter, has some interesting comments about the new pricing structure though. No more bandwidth limits, but there's no more Personal Edition (not to be confused with the Developer's Edition which is still freely available, but only for dev purposes), only a $4500 Professional version which limits the total number of simultaneous connections to 100. So if your application is a low bandwidth, high usage app, then you may have a few issues with the new price. Check out Stefan's ruminations.

I think its going to take some time to see how the market shakes out on all this. The business models at various hosting services may become more important as individual developers (or even companies) decide they can't host FMS2 applications on their own.

[via Peldi]