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So last week Autodesk acquired Softimage which is interesting… we live in interesting times. What Autodesk wiil do with XSI is another thing. XSI hasn’t been doing too well recently, they have been running more or less independantly from Avid and Avid really only purchased it for its intellectual property and wanted it to continue as it was and .. well have now dumped it because it hasn’t ben performing. Has Autodesk purchased XSI just to take out the competition and move people to Maya and 3DS Max? Or are they looking at doing the same as Avid and take what they need to improve the other products? Its been a bit of a rocky road for Maya to integrate into Autodesk and there have been buggy releases since the merger. Can Autodesk continue to develop three different 3D packages, at somepoint they are bound to converge.
With another 3D company heading to Autodesk will the lack of competition be damaging to the industry? only time will tell. But I am surprised they haven’t been called up against the ‘Monopolies and Mergers Commission’ as they really do have a monopoly now!
There is a lot of discussion on the autodesk website at the moment.
