Friday Flashback #115

[Stephen Blair]

Softimage Friday Flashback #115
http://wp.me/powV4-2FJ
The XSI 1.0 box set

[Christopher]

They did things with more time put into it.  Overall nicer with books etc.  Now you just download your stuff and sent on a bus.

Christopher

Stephen Blair

Friday, April 12, 2013 1:12 PM

[adrian wyer]

ahh yes the infamous xsi 'smoke' product covers.. that were "rendered in
xsi, honest" for about 6 months, until "oh, er actually they weren't"

hehehe

a

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[Mirko Jankovic]

ehe AD 2014 logo style (smoke and movement in 2013 almost = XSI 1.0 box art) :)))

[Sam Cuttriss]

They were just an elaborate surface with incidence shader werent they?  

those old boxes still look great,

[Dan Yargici]

Turned out they were photographs iirc...

[Grahame Fuller]

I don't see the plastic pedestal in those pics.

gray

-----Original Message-----
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Stephen Blair
Sent: Friday, April 12, 2013 01:13 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Friday Flashback #115

[Chris Chia]

I really wonder how much XSI 1.0 would have cost given that those prints would have been very expensive in the past...

Sent from my iPhone

[Matt Lind]

printing wasn't a huge concern in those days as the software sold for nearly $13,000 USD with about $200 going towards printing and manufacturing materials. The extra materials acted as a way to help justify the high cost of the software in the eyes of a pre-internet sales business climate. When people spend more, they expect more in the box.

The main issue was the web wasn't developed enough as a distribution medium to handle full releases on a mass scale....although in the case of XSI v1.0 the installer was only 30 MB (vs. 1.6 GB today). Most of the disc spaced was consumed by help documentation and example content which were both much larger. While help documentation was electronic from day one in HTML format, web browsers weren't very good leading to graphics glitches, slow performance, and limited search and navigation capabilities. It wasn't until years later that web browsers improved enough to make replacing printed materials practical.

Printing costs weren't a strong factor until the software prices came down to their present levels. Scheduling the manufacturing of printed materials was probably a bigger issue as it required a lot of lead time sometimes pushing a release out the door before it was ready to ensure it was delivered by the announced release date.


Matt





________________________________________
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Chris Chia [chris...@autodesk.com]
Sent: Friday, April 12, 2013 8:05 PM
To: <soft...@listproc.autodesk.com>
Subject: Re: Friday Flashback #115

[Chris Chia]

Yes Matt. That was what I meant as I didn't know the price of XSI 1.0. Assuming if it was the price of the current Softimage, then those packaging and thick copies of printed docs would have constitute to a big portion of the cost price.

[Luc-Eric Rousseau]

I don't think it's that crazy to print books in low volume for a 3000$ product today, but iI recall it was  quite a burden to have to finish the doc and the screenshots long in advance of shipping. i'm pretty sure those books quickly became stale and didn't include the new features but just the generalities that didn't change.  you didn't get all the books for an upgrade.  I think everyone dropped books firstly to shorten that release window and then to cut any extra expense. I recall there was an app that you could pay something like 200$ extra for printed manual, can't recall if that was us.

[Ed Harriss]

Bah, who needs pretty manuals when you have this!  ;)

 

http://www.erimez.com/misc/Softimage/tutorials/si_help/si_uk_frames.htm

 

I know, I know… it is not the same, but at the time it was a very good idea. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed mauals , you could write all over them and when your hard drive/network/OS crashed it gave you something to do while you waited. (They were a l ittle hard to search though.)

 

 

Ed

 

 

 

 

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Luc-Eric Rousseau
Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2013 8:38 AM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Friday Flashback #115

 

I don't think it's that crazy to print books in low volume for a 3000$ product today, but iI recall it was  quite a burden to have to finish the doc and the screenshots long in advance of shipping. i'm pretty sure those books quickly became stale and didn't include the new features but just the generalities that didn't change.  you didn't get all the books for an upgrade.  I think everyone dropped books firstly to shorten that release window and then to cut any extra expense. I recall there was an app that you could pay something like 200$ extra for printed manual, can't recall if that was us.