Light ROM 4/Light ROM 4 - Disc 1.iso/text/maillist/1995/1095.doc/000081_owner-lightwav…mail.webcom.com_Mon Oct 2 14:48:54 1995.msg

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Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 14:39:33 -0700
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To: James Lloyd <[e-mail]>
From: Steve Carpenter <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Awesome news about the Raptor!
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>James A. Lloyd writes;
>
>Newtek's biggest competition is Autodesk. Deskstation's competition is
>SGI.  How does this move allow them to fix prices indiscriminately?  If
>they start pricing in the SGI/Alias range, I'm gonna choose Alias.  If
>there is no cooperation, (meaning no significant advances in technology),
>and the gear is dirt cheap, I'm still going to choose Alias.  But if they
>can make those advances at a more attractive price than SGI, I'm interested.
>
>This deal doesn't set up a monopoly for Newtek/Deskstation (NewStation?),
>but it has the potential to break up the SGI/Wavefront/Alias juggernaut.
>

Although this joint venture may someday have the 'muscle' to rival
SGI/Wavefront/Alias, there is also the MicroSoft/SoftImage/Digital
juggernaut.  And if you have followed MicroSoft over the years, you know
that they like being "King of the Hill" more than anyone.  If they can't
make a better product than their competition, they simply buy them out
(FoxPro for example).  By continuing to strengthen their relationship with
DEC, they are setting themselves up to go head to head with SGI/Alias.  This
competition goes way beyond 3D animation software and into video
conferencing, VRML sites, internet market shares and a bunch of other 21st
century techno-economic stuff.

Anyway, in my opinion, we can look for continued improvements in NT to take
advantage of DEC's Alpha chip, better support for OpenGL, a strong push for
video accelerators like the Glint chip which would rival the Reality Engine,
not to mention all the other software MicroSoft has to offer an NT user (can
you imagine phong shading in Layout/Modeler and if say Adobe or Fractal
Designer came out with a 3D paint program to rival Amazon and Flesh!) and
the fact that a NT workstation costs less, DEC just announced it has cut
prices, for example an Aplha XL was cut from $4995 to $3995.

Even though all these improvements to NT will be geared towards SoftImage,
LW will be able to take advantage of them as well, with or without a
NewTek/Deskstation accord.

I am very interested in what this agreement will mean, but I do not think it
is NewTek intent to alienate non-Raptor Alpha users, there are far to many
people who own non-Raptor Alphas and a good deal of LightWave's high profile
users do not own Raptors.
-------------------------

   Steven Carpenter
   Senior Animator
   Will Vinton Studios

-------------------------

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