question about total cost of ownership

[jinchoung]

howdy,

i just came back from a los angeles xsi event today at the gnomon school and i was really just blown away. they showed the gator and motor stuff, crosswalk, the different configuration setups to be maya/max like (soooooooo smart... really kudos) and there was even demonstration of a beta feature that just really floored me. it seemed to me that you guys are getting in on the future of programming and i think it's just really brilliant.

anyhoo, at all my jobs, i'm a maya generalist and i'm working as a technical artist now but it's not an app that i can afford (buy in price, cost/frequency of upgrades, etc). i own lightwave currently for personal use but that presentation is really making me think about going xsi. especially since buy in price is variable and generally far cheaper than maya.

i'm wondering what the total cost of ownership is. what's the upgrade pricing.... what's the upgrade policy? (like autodesk - upgrade now or never again or like adobe - upgrade whenever you want at the same price or somewhere inbetween?).

do you guys have a page with info on this?

in any case, you guys had some really sweet GIVE AWAYS that will keep me busy for a while (and THANK YOU VERY MUCH btw) but if the presentation was a sale gimmick, let me tell ya, you guys do good work!

thank you much and rock on... especially with the beta stuff!!!

jin

[StephenBlair]

If you have a maintenance contract, all upgrades are free for the duration of your contract.

If you do not have maintenance:


SP release upgrades like 6.02 are free.
Point release upgrades like 6.5 are in general not free.
Major release upgrades like 5.0 and 6.0 are not free.


You can purchases upgrades and there is upgrade pricing.
For example, if you have XSI Essentials 5.11, but no maintenance, you can purchase an upgrade to Essentials 6.5.

Contact a reseller or Softimage Sales for pricing info.
http://softimage.com/buy/

[jinchoung]

cool. thanks very much.

i contacted a re-seller so hope i'll get more specifics soon.

oh, one thing, what happens if you don't upgrade for a while? if i was still at xsi 4, what would be the policy regarding upgrade to current?

is it like adobe where it's a flat price to upgrade no matter what version you're coming from or is it like autodesk where if you miss an upgrade, you simply won't be able to upgrade anymore.... or something in between?

just seeing if this is an investment i can afford to keep up with.

thanks.

jin

[StephenBlair]

You can upgrade old versions. For example, you can upgrade from Ess 4 to Ess 6.5.

I believe model upgrades (eg Ess to Adv) are different, you upgrade the model not the version (eg you upgrade Ess6 to Adv6).

As always, check with your reseller or sales rep.

[teamcarlisle]

Also just a FYI on maintenance, according to my reseller maintenance is only good for one year from the time you purchased XSI, not from the date you purchase the maintenance. I bought esentials during the 6.5 pre-order (around last Sept I think it was) and was waiting till I felt XSI7 was getting close before I bought a Maintenance contract. (So I could get the longest use out of it, I thought) Then I found out that if I bought maintenance right now , I would only be covered until this next September, not till next April :(
I need to get ahold of my reseller again and find out what the upgrade price would be. As a hobbyist, I had a hard time saving up for xsi in general, and I don't have spare money to throw into maintenance with no guarentee that there will even be a new release within a year of my last purchase. I'd also kinda like to see whats going to be in the next release before I spend money on it too (although if they release ICE, formerly known as Moondust, I'm probably going to want it real bad)

[teamcarlisle]

Just got off the phone with my reseller. Maintenance is $800 for one year from the time you purchased xsi. Or if you would rather wait and see what the next release offers its $1000 for a regular upgrade. Also I asked about if I skipped xsi 7 and later wanted to upgrade my ver. 6.5 to something later like ver 8 or so, he said its subject to change but normally softimage will allow that upgrade for the same price. This conversation was all in reference to Essentials, so I'm not sure about foundation or advanced. Hope it helps

[jinchoung]

thanks jc,

yikes... one year from time of xsi purchase and NOT maintenance contract? that sounds counterintuitive... though it's probably no different from other such contracts....

cool, definitely understand the "subject to change" caveat but good to know what their policy is and has been up to this point....

i'm definitely not in the position to be tossing around fistfuls of cash (i.e. rich) either so it's good to know that skipping is an option.

and thanks for the ballpark figure... yeah, all of this is stuff i have to take into consideration as it pertains to total cost of ownership.

jin

[MDK]

In fact, the upgrade policy allows "creative" solutions if you skip versions.

For instance, our licenses at the studio are old Softimage|3D licenses from the 90s, transferred to our user account, and brought to the current version with a relatively inexpensive upgrade.

We dont have a single XSI license that was a XSI license in the first place, they all "became" XSI after purchase.. So you shall not encounter too much issues when skipping version steps due to limited $$$.

[druitre]

Informative... thanks, all.

So you say a version upgrade would be around $1000. What can I expect to pay for a point upgrade - for instance, what has been the price of a 6 to 6.5 upgrade?

I bought into Essentials last year september with the 6.5 pre-order (like Teamcarlisle) so have no experience with Softimages pricing/updating history.


Thanks, Jasper