Silicon Studio, a subsidiary of Silicon Graphics, has unveiled new products designed to streamline the development and management of digital content for the entertainment and interactive product industries.

In a series of announcements made March 4, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company unveiled the FireWalker interactive content authoring system and StudioCentral, an asset management system for the entertainment industry. Silicon Graphics also announced sgi workstations would be used as a programming and creation environment for Sega Saturn, Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64 game players.

FireWalker is an open-architecture system for the development of high-end 3D interactive titles for multiple playback platforms, which also allows realtime playback of the title at any point in the production process.

The system converts and integrates different media types and content like 3D models and animation, 2D images and textures, video and sound.

Ganymede, an action title from San Francisco-based Rocket Science scheduled for release in December, will be the first commercial title developed with FireWalker. The complete system will be priced around $15,600 and will be available this summer.

StudioCentral is a group of asset management tools for digital production studios, allowing content creators to catalog, manage and access digital data placed in sgi servers.

It includes the StudioCentral Developer Kit, which allows third-party developers to tailor StudioCentral to their needs, priced around $23,500. StudioCentral Silver Edition allows single users or a small networked group to access media files through the Indigo Magic interface and is priced at about $7,800; the Gold Edition, priced at about $31,000, supports larger digital studios with a number of enhancements.

StudioLiveSM, an online group of Web-based tools and information resources, was also announced. The service is located on the Web at //www.studio. sgii.com. TI