Big Corporate "Standards" (Score 1)

Tweak Films does not have a stranglehold on CG. I fail to see how the GTO format and associated code could not be continued by any number of other people if they so choose. But to reiterate: GTO is not being offered as a universal standard -- if it became one for whatever reason the authors would certainly be bewildered.

FYI, Microsoft has "collaborated" on an even broader project in the past called Fahrenheit. That is an interesting piece of CG history which people may want to remember when buying in to projects like this.

And finally, I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would want to exchange 3D geometric and animation data over a network using XML -- especially in a human readable form. That's simply masocistic. Even moderately sized data of that type becomes unwieldy in that form. If there was ever a less appropriate use of XML I can't think of it.