Professional game devs will spend whatever it takes to get the tools that work best for them - within some kind of budget determined by the amount of money available to them.

After all this back and forth in this thread, then, the real question would be how many professional developers are there in this thread? Because if that's the case, then I agree that you'd want to spend every penny you can get your hands on for the best tool set.

So, how many people here in this thread develop games professionally as their sole source of income in their own business? Not working for someone else. And how many have had a successful commercial title (successful meaning that you can at least make a living from it)?

That would be an interesting bit of information and make certain points in this thread much more valid...