Softimage
Gary
Thought you might be interested in this tidbit.
On Sunday night the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) ran a five
minute piece on the MS purchase of SoftImage on their weekly business
show.
They had on-camera interviews with "Technology Analyst" – Paul
Kedrosky; Softimage Pres. – Peter Crombie; MS Cda. Pres. – Frank
Clegg.
The reporter in her piece had three interesting comments;
1. "MS ultimate goal – to create inexpensive software so people can do
their own animation – at home"
2. "A year behind Softimage what MS bought was a head start in the
home animation market & the chance to be the first to
deliver it at a consumer price."
Mr. Hash where are you today <g>?
3. Mentioned the Sega Sonic Hedgehog as the most popular animated
character in the games industry and how MS could make glitzy 3D
animated characters with Softimage.
I wonder if the Wizards technology could be getting a face & voice to
go with the advice.
Paul Kedrosky
" Today it's [SoftImage] selling to game manufacturers and motion
picture studios. In bringing the price down to these levels MS
effectively is saying I don't know who it'll appeal to. I'm just
betting that it will appeal to more people and that's always been MS
strategy – lower the price & let the consumer figure out what to do
with it."
Peter Crombie
"It's going to accelerate the introduction of interactive
communications within the home, because the younger generation are
more adept, their eye-hand co-ordination is far better than mine or
people of my generation. And they're going to be able to sort of be
the forerunners of the application of this technology. They're going
to be the people 5 years from now that are going to demand this kind
of technology."
Frank Clegg
"Over the next 2 – 3 years you're going to see a lot more software
that's available in terms of content. You're going to see a lot more
games available and a lot more applications that people can use. In
the 5-10 year time frame you're going to start to see something like
a spreadsheet that's kind of a combination of a Sega game and a
spreadsheet that's going to be very 3D, very interactive, a lot of
different abilities to use the technology."
I finally found out the student pricing from Mick McKillop at Autodesk
Cda. $850 – a far cry from the $1,500 I was originally told. Now I
have to save up some money again and then get a letter from my dept.
head, not just a prof. allowing me to purchase. Don't understand the
letter part and since Carleton's bureaucracy makes govt bureaucracy
look like a cake walk it wont be simple, but at least I know now what
I'm shooting at is there.