Heh, considering I did use Construct for animation quite recently this is cool to see. I'm one of the individuals you've heard from that C3 is solid for animation. Especially the exporter since that was the main point of pain for me.
I also noticed that it appears to be essentially a build variant of Construct itself, which is a smart move I'd say (for example if the product fails, hope I didn't jinx it :V) Here's a couple of questions:
How will Animate differentiate itself from Construct?
Right now it appears to be literally C3, with all gamedev features stripped + a single new export option. This makes sense overall and as I said I think it's smart to handle it this way, but I already have a C3 license with all the features (+ extra). The only exception (right now) is the new exporter. You also alluded that the exporter will be exclusive to Animate and after the public beta, I will not be able to use it.
As it is right now, I'd probably not buy it. What you'll need to convince me would be some features, exclusive to animate, that are not useful in the gamedev-context. Because if they are useful in the gamedev-context, I expect them to carry over from Animate.
Will there be cross-compatibility between Animate and C3?
Of course one would have to be careful with features that are not available in one or the other, but otherwise I hope this won't be much of an issue.
Just based on the few posts here with suggestions, you probably know you just took a leap into a deep dark rabbit hole, with strong and established competition on the market. But considering I personally hated the competition and ended up using the ol' reliable Construct, this might not be the worst idea after all.