Xara Acquired by Magix

A little over a week has passed since this announcement. It wasn't surprising since Xara was a fairly small company trying to compete against Corel and Adobe for graphics users.

Xara Xtreme: Award winning graphics software for creating, composing and optimizing both vector and bitmap graphics. Offers the fastest rendering in the business, unrivaled on-screen graphics quality and a clean, slick user interface that makes it a pleasure to use. A great value choice for both professional web and print work.
Find out more	CD: $79 Retail: $89

If you haven't worked with Xara products before, you really should give them a look. Xara Xtreme is their high-end product and it is a real powerhouse that is as fast as greased lightning.

Many will confuse this transaction with the short-lived marketing agreement that Xara had with Corel. Yes, there was a product named Corel Xara marketed by Corel. All development was done by the Xara crew and the agreement was discontinued as Xara's product was competition for CorelDRAW.

Charles Moir, head of Xara, posted a message that answers a lot of questions about this acquisition. In short, it appears that this acquisition will provide Xara with some much needed resources to grow their userbase. That is a big win for everyone, even if you don't use their products. Good competition leads all players to make better products.