As home computer hardware evolves into better and better media machines,
the demand increases for higher quality, more detailed data.  Data
development gets more expensive, requires more expertise and better tools,
and has to be shared across projects.  Think about several ports of a
product on one CD-ROM with 500M Bytes of common data!

Development tools need standard interchange file formats.  Imagine
scanning in images of "player" shapes, transferring them to an image
enhancement package, moving them to a paint program for touch up, then
incorporating them into a game.  Or writing a theme song with a Macintosh
score editor and incorporating it into an Amiga game.  The data must at
times be transformed, clipped, filled out, and moved across machine kinds.
Media projects will depend on data transfer from graphic, music, sound
effect, animation, and script tools.