PPP3 - 'The Long and lonely death of Softimage'

Autodesk have announced that hey will no longer be continuing to update and release new version of Softimage ever year. (Link) Instead they've decided to focus their 3D Software related efforts towards 3DS Max and Maya.

Personally I'm quite happy to hear this as I think the industry seems to be too saturated with different kinds of software that do very similar jobs to each other. 3DS Max & Maya seem to be the most popular 3D modelling softwares within the gaming industry - Zbrush being the other, mainly used for different uses in conjunction with the former two.

I think this news is important for the VFX and gaming world though as any Softimage specialists are going to have to retrain and gear their skills towards different software from now on. It will also affect artists financially as they people will have to now switch products and invest time, effort & money into learning new software in order to keep up to speed with the standard the industry will be running at.

I've never worked in Softimage myself so none of this should affect me at all however I feel it's important t keep up to date on the direction technology move within the industry as it's constantly progressing and artists always need to be able to have the key skills as well as the portfolio in order to find work.