ICE in Maya is an engineer's worst nightmare

[Hirazi Blue]

I keep repeating this but we can't come to any conclusions on how Softimage will progress and be developed as fact. Only time will tell.

I fully agree, but expressing our fears (not "mongering" them) is a natural way of dealing with an uncertain future. I applaud your attempts (and those by others) to counteract some of the misunderstandings that might arise in such discussions, but IMHO the expression of fears (within reason, obviously, however vague that may sound) is well-placed on forums like this, especially because some can be counteracted.

And BTW: they did "cripple" Softimage, when they took the Legacy Particles out...

[EricTRocks]

It definitely doesn't read as opinion.

[Nizar]

IMHO cannot blame a users if don't see a logic into AD manoeuvres.

to day I receive my 3dworld copy, softimage virtually disappeared. Idem for 3d artist, no softimage, at all.

If I searching into some popular site like Polycount, softimage is not present or poorly presented, and into AD site, as we just know, softimage is well hidden, so the some when looking at AD marketing onto magazine or popular web like CGtalk (remember the "dynamic duo" advertise? The AD marketing department is great... ), situation is not better if you read some forum (from cgtalk to luxology forum) where the imminent closure of softimage is certain. So, IMHO, it's entirely an AD fault and its bad marketing if users and potential customers has this bad perception about softimage future.

Ad about new development tools, again, cannot blame a user if is a bit skeptical about new release. If we look the past release I don't see so many requested features implemented into softimage (the famous icecentric development). I don't mean was a worse development ( I starting only now my study into ICE and I found it useful and powerful), say only many users had different (very divergent) opinion about the past development.

Fortunately studios doesn't reading forum when make a decision about software use, but many freelancer and student are obviously influenced by forum discussion when choice a new software to learn and use.