> I don't know, but an 'already determined (& rather bleak) fate' > sounds alot to me like 'death row', which I really don't think at-all > ever applied to XSI until.. (ice)
No, that's an error on your part. 'Fate' is a long term outcome based on development of events outside one's control. It's not synonymous with death. In this case it meant Softimage would never be the 800 pound gorilla some hoped it would be. That fate was determined by customers already investing in other options due to the long string of broken promises and being late to market thereby damaging credibility. Many of the tangible issues were later remedied, but not until after it was too late. > I don't either recall that, I would think that if anything, > whichever it's state, would have had a growth somewhat > relative to what ICE seemed to bring, as opposed to the other > way around, or -maybe- with a time delay if the prior version > happened to have some issue (?) Exactly my point. 2007 was the high point in your stats, and the same year which the issues with XSI 6.x occurred. It takes a while for issues like that to become impactful on a global scale, but even more difficult to undo the damage once it's done. Winter months are a popular time to hire in most industries. Most hiring was likely front loaded before the XSI 6.x issues were widely known as many were likely still on XSI 5.11 at the time, so the damage in the jobs sector likely wasn't seen until later in the year. Add in some of the observations of Luc-Eric and there you have it. The numbers were already in decline before ICE was released and never recovered. ICE did bring new eyes onto the product, but not enough to overcome the other shortcomings. By that point ICE acted as life support keeping options open, and the timing of it's introduction was important too. If ICE had already been on the market a few years, data would've illustrated whether it was helping sales or not. If it wasn't making a big dent, Softimage would've been killed sooner. But because ICE was *just* introduced at time of the Autodesk acquisition, Autodesk had to at least let the ICE hand run for a bit and see if it had any legs. That bought Softimage at least a few years it wouldn't have had otherwise. Avid was determined to get rid of Softimage to solve their other internal issues, and the only other taker in rumor was Dassault - do you really think Dassault understood media and entertainment well enough to give the kind of support Softimage needed? I don't. So you can knock Autodesk all you want, and the knocks may be perfectly valid, but on the flip side the alternatives weren't necessarily better or assure an improved situation. For all we know Dassault could've pulled a Microsoft and dumped millions into the company only to suddenly pull the cord when sales didn't meet expectations. Autodesk at least let the boat sale for better or for worse. If you don't remember XSI 6.x, then you must've been living under a rock or not pushing the software's feature set very hard. Keep in mind that Softimage had strong games market and XSI 6.x's issues were especially bad for game developers. So if you were working in film/video, you likely didn't feel the impact of that release as much as a game developer would have. As I stated numerous times in the past, my studio didn't get any relief until Softimage 7.5, and we were then stuck on that release until Softimage 2013 SP1 because of all the show stopping issues in between. I know of other studios in similar boats. Some threw caution to the wind and pushed forward anyway only to later regret doing that. What Maya or anybody else does at that point is almost irrelevant. Matt Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2016 20:49:41 -0400 From: Jason S <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Autodesk acquires Solid Angle To: [email protected] On 04/21/16 5:26, Matt Lind wrote: I never said XSI was on death row, I said it was viable with a small cushion, but long term it's fate was already determined from the miscues which occurred during the Sumatra release I don't know, but an 'already determined (& rather bleak) fate' sounds alot to me like 'death row', which I really don't think at-all ever applied to XSI until.. (ice) On 04/21/16 5:26, Matt Lind wrote: XSI v6.0 was released on the last day in 2006 (call it 2007) - the biggest lemon and disaster in XSI's history. Granted, cause of the problem was a screw-up at Avid HQ erroneously divulging a release when one wasn't planned forcing the team to put humpty dumpty together again in an insanely short time, but the damage was done. I don't either recall that, I would think that if anything, whichever it's state, would have had a growth somewhat relative to what ICE seemed to bring, as opposed to the other way around, or -maybe- with a time delay if the prior version happened to have some issue (?) Or it would'nt account for the continuing dwindle specifically from that point-on (which there is no need for numbers to confirm that), while the purchase announcement was quite unanimously interpreted with an ultimately quite fitting "oh no!" as a first reaction (for some reason) Otherwise if SI still has stuff going for it today, (while not having changed much) if you recall back then, ... Moondust was right around the corner, and XSI was in quite a few bigger and smaller places, with all it's (both new & old yet futuristic) things/aspects, some of which only later made their way in different DCC's, (and with other things that either only just came, or are still not there yet often by a considerable measure) While Maya (Up-t'il 2011?) depite it's high customisability (like a big script), was arguably mostly riding on it's previously established presence (bigger shops typically had their own self made versions and still do), it looked like Win95, there was no Nex, shader networks were square nodes with drawings and multiple crisscrossing lines between them, subds were quite crappy & slow , RenderLayers (up to last week), and was somewhat more awkward for a bunch of things in modeling etc.. (quite a bit more tedious than it already is today except with the same construction stack and other things) so I'm not arguing that it didn't come some way from there since, but.. But I would think it was at least partly why SI (with brand new ICE) was snatched just before it would have otherwise surely have further taken-off to -some- degree. Nevertheless, people are still looking to get back to square 1 in regards to a bunch of things using combinations to the measure of what's possible using what's out there now (often with some way to go for the more elaborate things, or whenever stepping outside the few fairly small and patchy areas that have been paved or 'humanized' ) But for that it doesn't really matter now anyways, in light of Arnold, let's just hope for the best with one main company further steering the bulk of the industry, or that shareholders won't elect to (further) steer it too much in their favor, only because.. whatever Autodesk says... Best, -J ------ Softimage Mailing List. To unsubscribe, send a mail to [email protected] with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.
