To be clear, i do not suggest for one moment that major studios should be muscled into a change of any sort.

Does it sound like that growth is major studios, though?

But then even your best case scenario is impossible. If Maya alone sells more NEW seats every year than the entire Softimage user base (and I assume Max would be similar?), Softimage would have to triple its user base every year just to maintain market share.
That is seriously the bleakest thing I've ever heard about the market situation.

yes those figures are surprising as to the disproportionate amounts involved, I guess some of us have been living in a sheltered Softimage bubble for the past 10+ years with our hands over our eyes and ears and this is an eye opener to actually have some of these hard facts. Of course its obvious of SI lack of market share but did not realise it was to such an extent! If these figures were known beforehand then I guess most of us would be happy with what we get rather than complain that life is not fair. wake up and smell the coffee time for sure. I for one am happy with Softimage , what it currently offers, and what is on the horizon, it seems to get better not stagnate. Like the other guy said, lets just shine with our work and proves how good it really is.

I guess the biggest problem I've had is, it's not as though Softimage is a vastly inferior product. It's sold at a fairly high price, so it's clearly not seen as a plug-in or accessory, yet it's packaged as one.

I feel as though if Autodesk were a car dealer that sold 3 different cars, they only put 2 cars out on the lot for you to look at and hide the 3rd in the back where you can't see it unless you specifically ask. Then all the brochures for the cars make the 3rd car out as though it's just some bonus floor-mats you can get when you buy the sports package.

Functionally they do the same thing. They each have strengths and weaknesses. The argument that one sells more, therefore it should be promoted more is typical dumb corporate marketing think. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maya sells the most, so we put all our $$$ into marketing it and therefore it's sales go up.

I would love to see what would happen if AD took Maya's marketing budget and put it into Softimage for 1 year, and took Soft's budget and put it into Maya for 1 year.

That's truly all we can do with any software tool set. I say "tool-set" just to keep things sober.

Yep, I think you're right on target with the "self fulfilling prophecy" idea. Only the users can really show that the prophecy is wrong. But tomorrow if AD is throwing stumbling blocks in front of us slowing things down, well that defeats the purpose of selling the SI goods in the first place.

well precisely and I've been kinda saying this for ages, but its hard to make people understand because I can't exactly quite numbers etc. Also there also has to be a realistic of expectation of how and where Softimage was likely to fit into Autodesk's product range. After having pushing Max/Maya to people for so longer, it was unlikely that ADSK would turn around to people and say ' you know we sold you this software, actually you should be using this instead' - if I was a customer, that wouldn't be something I would perhaps like to hear.

Also not long after Softimage was acquired the economic downturn started to hit and it effected many people businesses. People and studio weren't likely to suddenly switch their packages as for some the priority was more about staying in business and getting through the tough times. Also people weren't talking about switching, the feedback from many was about collaboration and interop. They had their core 3D app - Max, Maya and Softimage, but they wanted to use features/technologies from the others and considering the folio that ADSK had it made sense to try and facilitate this more and more.



It kinda doesn't like that in terms of marketing budgets. In the past ADSK may have been more product centric in terms on its marketing, but more recently its more about industries. Especially now that ADSK is doing alot more with things like Suites. And yes its true it may appear more bias because there's Max/Maya Suites, it then comes back to what Luceric have said, together with Chinnys previous postings to the user list.
If you look at many to the customer presentations at our shows or customer case studies in more recent years, they will nearly always try and include more than one of our products or even Suites, as this often reflects peoples workflows. I'm sure people might still say that there aren't enough customer presentations/demos involving Softimage, ok, then contact us and let us know about stuff. We have marketing people who deal with the showreels and customer relations, who are always looking for cool stuff.

Hm...I don´t get the logic behind that. Wouldn´t a car manufacturer like to sell better technology to their clients instead of telling them, they are fine with the old one?? Would a computer manufacturer do so?? Anyone else in the commercial world selling technological items..??
Most likely the clients need to have a solution for getting their jobs done. If, I say IF, Softimage would be considered to do so, AD would promote it better, I guess. Right now AD considers Soft to be somekind of "emergency tire" to their "old school" packages, so stay in that car analogy.
That´s the problem in my eyes. AD tries to ride their old horses as long as possible. Putting more efforts in marketing for Softimage would be more expensive than just doing it the good old "max and maya are great" way. By the way: putting Softimage on AD´s frontpage would cost NOTHING and it would be a start, wouldn´t it I´m quite sure, that won´t ever happen..

cheers,
oli

Sorry, but this makes no sense.
Before AD acquire Maya, Max was their flagship product, but they pushed Maya equally after the acquisition, with no need to turn around to people and say"you know we sold you this software, actually you should be using this instead".
Why not push/expose SI equally with Maya+Max, even with a small effort for a start as owei suggested (putting Softimage on AD´s frontpage)?
Nobody said AD should "degrade" Maya+max in favor of SI, but if SI remains a hidden gem, known mostly to it's faithful users, i can't see how it can gain the market share it deserves.

How about have the studios and users of Softimage make some truly kick ass work to show off what it can do?