Flash 8 officially announced, sort of released

So 8/8 has finally come, and Macromedia has officially announced the new version of Flash. Surprisingly, the new IDE isn’t called Flash MX 2005 – my personal bet – nor Flash MX 2, but actually Flash 8. To tell the truth, I thank Macromedia for this decision; product branding and all that is very important, but it would become kind of insane to keep up with what was what in the near future (Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite naming comes to mind).

Anyhow, even though it only ships somewhere next month (and Flash Player 7 is still the default player available for download), they’re already taking preorders for Flash 8 and for the rest of the Studio package, which is now called Studio 8 and includes DreamWeaver 8 and FireWorks 8 (as well as a backpack as a bonus). They also have an online campaign for the new software.

Personally, I’m pretty happy to see that the same price has been kept from Flash MX 2005 to Flash 8 (at least for now). Since I’m finally starting my own business, this will be the first version of Flash I’ll buy; even though I’m not sure yet how pricing and availability will change until it gets down here, I’m confident it’ll eventually arrive at the same prince we’re having Flash MX 2005 now which is still a hefty ammount to our market’s standards but anyways.