Nick Iuppa, Vice President of Design, Paramount Digital Media, Mountai View, California: My good friend Chuck Jones recently reminded me that Webster's definition of animation is "to breathe life into something." And that is what I see animation doing for the Internet, adding life to locations and pages that formerly were static.

Of course there are tools required to make this happen, there are questions of download time. But the pull of user demand may bring those tools into our hands more quickly than we ever thought possible.

In the meantime, the more we can add motion to our sites, the more we can bring them to life. The is almost a requirement for those of us who are attempting to create entertainment sites. Without motion and quality sound, the Internet can never fully become a popular entertainment medium. Nor can it really begin to explore that most important and elusive characteristic, interactivity.

The Magic School Bus © Scholastic.

Sue Rosenthal, Manager Of Interactive Media, Scholastic Productions, New York City: I'm not typical in my vision of what's going to happen with CD-ROMs. The hype these days seems to be with the Internet and people think that they are going to be no more. But I think all you have to do is look at the installed base of computers with CD-ROM players in homes and schools to know that they are not going to go away overnight. Especially CDs for kids. They are the ones who are going to drive demand in the next decade. All one has to do is look at increasing sales of a program like the magic school bus or any of the other top kids titles to figure that out.

Up until very recently, animation was the viable option for CD-ROMs. It certainly looks like we'll have technologies that will not only be capable of running animation, but of running truly viable video and merging the two. In some respect, you're going to have computer graphics that are merging with video. A good example of that is Escape From Horrorland, the Goosebumps CD-ROM we did with DreamWorks.

What you've seen in the past is that the animation [in CD-ROMs] has been limited by what the user's computer can run. You're not getting as many frames as you are in television animation. The more powerful computers get and the better compression technology gets, then you'll be getting animation that's close to, or even better than television.

However, what's going to make animation and interactive entertainment products successful is starting out with a good story, a strong license and great characters. I don't care how good you're technology is, if you don't have that to begin with, you're not going to have a good product.

R. Scott Russo,Vice President, Interactive & Executive Producer, Film Roman.

Scott Russo, Vice President, Interactive & Executive Producer, Film Roman, North Hollywood: The industry has taken a good hit, with a lot of publishers going out of business. We've actually had a significant growth in the industry, but we've also had an exponential growth of titles coming into the marketplace. So, no one is really doing the numbers they've done previously.

Because of that, people are going towards games that were successful in the past--the Marios, the King's Quests and the Wing Commanders. Christmas 97 is going to be like a sequel summer, at least for the titles that are going to do well. There will be other titles out there, but I don't think they're going to have anywhere near the hit potential that some of the sequels will next year.

There's a lot of consumer weariness to where the market is really going. Once the platform wars settle down a bit (whether Ninetendo 64 or Sony Playstation is going to win), or if CD-ROMs are going to be around, or if everything going to go on-line. Thus, no one is buying a lot of product now. That's going to change, too, but it's going to take 18 months.