I guess this is a response to Unity and Unreal Engine, but given that both have free versions and vibrant communities and large dedicated development teams, I think it is a tough market for Autodesk to enter if it isn't going to dedicate very serious resources and a long-term focus.

Autodesk are already deeply embedded in the games industry with tools like Scaleform, Beast, HumanIK, etc. The list of products that use their middleware is impressive - http://gameware.autodesk.com/usage/games If they can leverage their userbase from the middleware to the engine they'll do very well.

if the integration to a 3ds max/maya pipeline and the quality is amazing they have a chance. otherwise pretty hard

> 3ds max/maya pipeline

Those, however, aren't free - far from it. At least with Unity you only have to shell out cash once you have [likely] made that cash from the sales you made with the free version. With this you need to shell out the cash up-front, for possibly one of the most ludicrously priced products in existence.

I can't see this going very far.

If Autodesk gets the visualization crowd using Stingray, they have a chance. The games market is a highly competitive and some would say unforgiving career, while the visualization market tends to be previsualization of very large projects, with matching expectations in the compensation of those involved and time frames of delivery. Simply offering a road to a less exhausting career could be the path to success for Stingray.

Autodesk acquired bitsquid (http://bitsquid.se/) last year. Btw their blog contains great ressources on game dev: http://bitsquid.blogspot.com

I can't find the info on the website, is it possible to code in C++? All I see is the LUA scripting. The engine look really artist oriented, but I think the first people you want to attract for a commercial product are the programmers.

With photorealism not being a speed problem but more of a artistic problem, i think its natural that tools focus on artists rather than programmers.

Movie-like assets for games are hard, expensive and artists who master all the skills that it takes are rare.

No hookup to Motionbuilder, I see. Sigh.

If Stingray had that single feature, this would have been a case of "shut up and take my money". As it is, not so much.