Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Autodesk buy XSI: Salvation from San Rafael

It seems like another Canadian has joined the ship of joy. Thats a bad joke :p
Apparently our beloved company, Autodesk, is planning to dominate the world of 3D creation content. Acquisition of Maya seems not enough for them. The other main competitor of Max and Maya, turn out to be the next casualty of this war. 

In 23 October 2008, Autodesk acquire XSI. Big news for everyone in 3D content creation world. While some might rejoice to this news (especially the guys at Softimage AFAIK), some are really pissed off about this news. So whats wrong in this acquisition? Well if you are not in 3D world, let me describe what happened, happening and will happen.

A few moment ago, there exist the big 5 in 3D: Autodesk (Max, Maya), Avid's Softimage (XSI), Newtek (Lightwave), Maxon (Cinema4D), and SideFX(Houdini) (I dont count Blender since its a non-profit software ;) ). The competition looks so good so you will notice changes in every version of the software. Although no written data about the number, but every one quite sure that Autodesk gain the most market share (with Max owning the game and Maya is our old good fella ;) ). XSI started gaining market. They began to make big promotion. The last CGChallenge at CGTalk was sponsored by Softimage, and people start noticing this program. Since then, XSI got into the competition. 

Now, Autodesk own XSI. That means more and more maket share owned by Autodesk. Some people thinks it is a start of a new monopoly. I myself hate this news. Its not that I dont like Autodesk (Im a Maya user), but I think, without major competitor on the market, there would be less improvement in the next version. Its like "im sorry RnD guys, we dont have that much money since we spent to much buying XSI". So the next Maya, will it be another waste of money? I know some might not agree with me but you can see this kind of monopoly happening in 2D creation content (Adobe). I dont know about you guys but I think CS1 until CS3 is a waste of money. CS4 is quite promising although Im not quite sure about it. 

So whats the future gonna be? I actually dont know. Autodesk promise will keep XSI on its path. They put a few XSI feature on Max. And no news about Maya :( Thats all the information flying around. There are a long debate between proffesional and Im quite sure most of them are pissed of, even the Autodesk biggest fans. 

Good luck, Autodesk

No comments: