Maya/3ds Max are entrenched but legitimately I think they offer things that make them essential to big productions over Blender. For many people though you could get by on Blender but most would not consider it.
I’m not sure what the plan is for the future, after they bought Maya it seems like they stopped doing any serious development into 3ds Max in favor of putting more into Maya and getting more licenses sold. With them switching to subscription they get the same amount either way so not sure what they’ll do. They really needed to go through with the Excalibur project (XBR) for 3ds Max which would have done some significant changes to fix issues and bring important features.