Autodesk partners with Lego
Lego has been the exception to the rule in the 21st Century. Where most old-fashioned playthings have fallen by the wayside in place of iPads, PlayStations and Xboxes, Lego has continued to thrive. When the recession was at its worst Lego’s profits grew by 32%.
Lego’s secret has always been to embrace emerging technologies and trends as opposed to worrying about them. When the world wanted theme parks after Disneyland opened in the 50s Lego gave us LEGOLAND, when every man and his dog wanted Star Wars toys Lego gave them the Millennium Falcon, when the kids wanted video games they gave them one of the best selling video games of 2005 in Lego Star Wars: The Video Game.
The team spots trends early and develop their product to fit, there’s no rush job, the brand is synonymous with quality. When a company, no matter how big, are able to collaborate with Lego they know they are on to a winner. So Autodesk’s announcement that they have partnered with the Lego Group to provide 3D building instructions for Lego’s Mindstorms EV3 could be big news indeed.
Autodesk, formerly a strictly professional CAD software firm, are really branching out to the consumer market at rate of knots, yesterday we brought you news of their latest iPad app 123D Creature, today this Lego partnership, who knows what they'll announce tomorrow?
Lego’s Mindstorms collections have proved a very successful arm for the Danish firm and the online community for these DIY robots is absolutely huge. Autodesk’s 3D instructions, available on mobile, tablet and web browser based platforms, could open up a whole new world for that expert community as well as being extremely helpful to beginners.
We’re very excited to get our hands on it and build ourselves a robot to fetch our slippers…
