I was going to upgrade from Cubase 6 to 6.5 ($50) and purchase Absolute VST for some upcoming time off. Now that upgrade is not longer available and I have to wait until Dec 5th to upgrade to Cubase 7 instead ($200)? Too bad that is after my time off. This really bites because it looks like my $300 purchase is now going to be $450, which is outside of my budget right now and I refuse to use any .0 version fresh out of the gate. Looks like they saved me some money since there are no feasible options for me at this point. bummer… 
anyone know if using the 6.5 demo for 30 days would get me by and allow me to use the Absolute VST plugins? not sure if that is still available though…
Yes, that will work. The VST instruments should work fine on a trial as long as everything is properly licensed (i.e. permanent or trial license). Make sure you have a way to revert back to C6 after the trial expires. Either via a re-install of C6 or a system restore, etc.
HTH
J.L.
I have contacted Steinberg about this. I use Mac OSX 6 and am not able to upgrade to 10.7 or 8 using my system. Therefore, if Steinberg denies me an upgrade license to 6.5, then I am being forced to purchase entirely new hardware. Hopefully Steinberg can make an exception.