I'm not sure if this would belong to the GDNET Lounge but I thought it dealt with Visual arts in a way. I was curious about what was up with Autodesk and buying Discreet and Alias and then offering softwares made for similar market competiting against each other under the same company name! I was wondering what would become of these softwares. And if they would still be used for the same competing market or their use would slowly start to diverge to different markets in the end.

Both these softwares will be around for a long time.

What you have now is a one market heavily entrenched with Maya (Film), and another entrenched with 3ds (Games). You have a whole slew of plugins for one or the other, a whole slew of scripts for one or the other, a different API/scripting language, and a plethora of developers with experience and existing work in one program or the other. So, until one of them are up for an entire rewrite/reinvention of their API that would essentially negate all past work beyond a simple recompiling, IMO they'll both be here.

I do feel, though, that they'll migrate towards different markets, especially now. Maya will continue to center on characters, and 3ds on game integration. For the most part, they'll be mostly the same, though, I'd say, and the technology sharing will benefit both. However, the acquistion of major competitor may also slow down innovation, but hopefully XSI and the like will be able to challenge (as they are already showing great signs of innovation).