To horn in on your conversation I know next to nothing about, I'd always noted that Microsoft bought Softimage, removed support for all OSes except Windows, released one version, and sold it. I always thought that this was their game plan. Basically to remove Unix from the animation equation.

That's not quite correct. Prior to Soft being purchased by MS, the *only* OS that the big three animation software ran on was IRIX. MS bought Soft at a time when a) Soft was the market leader, and b) everyone was in the middle of developing their next-gen systems (Maya, Houdini, XSI). Development of their next gen software (XSI) slowed while Soft was ported to NT. With the amount of money invested in SGI kit at large studios, they obviously weren't interested in jumping to NT. Not to mention the infrastructure problems. Meanwhile, MS gambled that PC hardware would eventually win its place in the studios, and they re-built what they had of XSI on top of NT. Everyone ignored XSI. Maya and Houdini come out. XSI does not. Maya and Houdini develop. XSI still not out. Eventually it gets to market about 2.5 years behind schedule. The film industry doesn't wait that long. Somewhere in the mix, here, MS realizes they dropped the ball, and gets rid of Soft. Lack on existing NT infrastructure still keeps XSI from being integrated. Houdini and Maya get released on Linux. XSI eventually gets released on Linux, but it depends on emulation and crossover libraries, due to having been written for NT. Development of XSI again pauses for a rewrite to get rid of the NT dependancies, and, as of last year or so, is finally making inroads to where it could have been about 4 years ago. It's got quite a following in Europe, but it's still a bit player over here in North America.

I don't think MS had a game plan of removing Unix from the animation system, so much as it was a case of recognizing that ultimately the PC would outstrip the SGI big iron that was then necessary. The animation software was $20k a license, and the hardware another $20k. Had they gotten their act together, and developed XSI first, *then* removed Unix from the equation, they'd have been in much better stead. Another thing MS may not have been able to hack is the short development cycles -- they're used to releasing new versions of software every year or three. Side Effects has a development cycle where they release a major version roughly every year, minor versions every 6 months, and smaller incremental builds as necessary to fix bugs customers need fixed yesterday.

* these vague details are certainly coloured by my recollections, and may be incorrect. But that's the gist of things.