Actually the list price for VirtualCenter is $4,995, and you need to add a SQL license and possible an OS license to that as well. Yup not cheap, but VMotion is still worth it for many shops.

It was not usual for us to have 20 to 30 VMs on an ESX host, moving them off was a "right-click, enter, enter, go make coffee" task. Why do I mention this? Well patches are a part of life, be it ESX or Hyper-V, but with Hyper-V at least you get creative reasons.
I have no doubt the MS will improve their Live Migration feature going forward, but at my old place I would not have gotten 30 seconds of down time to move a VM with out lots of approval, the joys of a 24*7.

Probably my biggest beef with MS and virtualization is the FUD and shennagians they played over the past 5 years trying to strangle the virtualization market while developing there own. I know this is a standard MS play, but it still irks me.
MS is not on a par with VMware's ESX, but with the size of their R&D budget it is only a matter of time before they narrow the gap.