Sales revenue was 2.31 Billion in 2013, and gross income 2.07 Billion.
The "funny" thing is that while I read on the list the reason for
shutting SI down is that they believe they can focus more on innovation
this way.
But AD spent only 600 million of that money on R&D, and 2.83 Billion on
"sales and administration". They spend way more money on selling the
idea they are innovative, then they spend on actually trying to
innovate. And when you consider how little innovation they have been
able to squeeze out of a budget that is still humongous to smaller, much
more innovative shops, it's simply embarrassing.
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/adsk/financials#
You can sell customers, or sheep as they are called in some business
models, heaps of crap as long as you spend enough dough on convincing
them it really doesn't stink, it's the sweet smell of innovation.
I suspect the peeps that pull the strings at AD really couldn't care
less about clients or innovation as long as this attitude brings in
higher profits. They wouldn't smell innovation even if it sat on their
face. Softimage with ICE is one of the most innovative DCC packages they
have on their hands, and even though they seem to understand that you
need to spend at least some money to sell innovation, they couldn't be
bothered to lift a single finger to sell SI.
but I'm rambling on..
-Ronald
On 3/15/2014 9:46, Matt Lind wrote:
I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. What you have to
understand is Autodesk doesn't want customers running concurrent
sessions off a single license as in a Maya/Max and a Softimage session
running in parallel. that would effectively allow double the users to
work while paying only half the price. eg; if a customer has 50
licenses it would allow 50 maya + 50 softimage users to run
concurrently, but pay for only 50 licenses. Some studios are ethical
and wouldn't do something like that, but as someone mentioned just the
other day, other studios in lesser affluent places might not be so
ethical. Even if Softimage were included for free, it still consumes
some amount of resources to ensure it still installs and runs as
advertised.
I agree in principle Autodesk should continue Softimage until one of
their other products can replace the functionality. If anything,
that's the ball that was dropped in this whole debacle. Of all
companies on the planet, you'd think the one with all the accumulated
experience of all the products that went through this process in the
1990's would know better and be more prepared than anyone else. But
what's done is done.
The problem with the theory of disgruntled users leaving and hurting
Autodesk is that the Softimage user base isn't large enough to really
be missed on Autodesk's bottom line. think about it. Only 8% of
Autodesk's revenue comes from media and entertainment. Of that 8%,
about 5% of it is from Softimage (0.4% total) - and that might be a
generous number. For every $100 Autodesk earns in revenue, 40 cents
comes from Softimage. Take out expenses and you're looking at much less.
I don't remember the actual number, but I thought somebody recently
reported Autodesk earned $392 million last year. So, let's run that
through the calculator:
$392,000,000 USD * 0.004 = $1,568,000 Softimage gross revenue
I don't know what 10 developers in Singapore get paid, so I'll use
conservative values based on USA rates:
10 * $100,000 = $1,000,000
subtract expenses from revenue:
$1,568,000 - $1,000,000 = $568,000
I don't know what marketing of Softimage costs, but I'm willing to bet
$568,000 USD doesn't go very far for a product that needs a lot of
attention to survive. Even if tripled, that's still lean. See the
problem?
One item of note that probably hasn't been brought up in discussion
yet is that Softimage has been included in the Max and Maya suites the
past few years, so some sales of Max and Maya may actually be
Softimage sales in a certain light - I know of at least one studio
where that is the case. In that scenario Softimage is getting the
short end of the stick when it comes to accounting.
I mourn the loss of Softimage as much as anybody having dedicated 21+
years of my life to it both as professional user and former owner of a
Softimage certified training center. Sometimes life sucks.
Matt
--
Ronald van Vemden
-----------------------------------------------
3D Graphics & Animation
Cyberfish Laboratories | www.cyberfish.nl
Toonafish | www.toonafish.nl
tel. +31(0)20 5289291
fax +31(0)20 5289292
email: [email protected]
