To be honest, I'm not really sure what the "preserve instances" option of Max's Alembic exporter is supposed to do - it certainly doesn't preserve instances in the traditional sense. If I export 1000 instanced teapots (64 segments each) with that option on (over a 100 frames range), I get a resulting filesize of 28mb, vs 30mb with it off. So it's still exporting 1000 meshes even though all meshes are instances of a single mesh.
I don't think Alembic supports true instancing, and there's no other way to get instances out of Max. The closest workaround would be to export your particles as an Alembic point cloud, then instance some mesh over the points in your other software, if it supports such a workflow.
I don't think Alembic supports true instancing, and there's no other way to get instances out of Max. The closest workaround would be to export your particles as an Alembic point cloud, then instance some mesh over the points in your other software, if it supports such a workflow.