I’d be willing to pay somewhere in the $100 - $300/year/license as a maintenance fee to have this product solid.
Nuendo is awesome, but needs to be supported better. The business model of software development prioritizes features over stability. Steinberg is no different in that they are incredible at providing features and seem to have less than adequate resources to fully test and support their software for the fast changing CPU and OS markets.
With the Digi/Avid, Apple/Logic shifts in the market I doubt Steinberg will be gaining market share. WE need to recognize that Steinberg is a boutique style business where customer support and a super high quality (stable) product is a defining part of their allure to customers.
Money talks. I encourage Steinberg to look at new models of supporting their products and user base…and I encourage the Nuendo faithful to have an open mind about it.
Ahh, … nothing…
I don’t know what problems some ppl have with Nuendo.
It does all I need and more. Room for improvement? Yes…
Shelling out money towards a Yamaha affiliated company…?
I’d rather not…
Hey , how about collecting money and buy SB from Yamaha?
Then we can all see how easy it is to run this company, make proper promotion work
and debug this DAW and further develope its range of great audio software.
Should be fun… But not for me, it isn’t…
Are you crazy? Don’t suggest these kind of things please. They already have all the resources they need. The maintenance has already been paid with the very expensive upgrades fees.
Every time I hear one of the above names I want to stay with SB/Yamaha more and more. Apple? Seriously? Now that’s a serious software developer!
If SB needs to improve things they have to do it without asking more money.
Andrewlackey, I understand your position, but giving them more money won’t change a thing.
I actually “get” the idea you are proposing, and think there is some merit to it. Software takes constant income to support its continued development. Its not a hammer that once its made it’s done. Software code needs constant updates and maintenance to stay “up-to-date” with the other software it works with such as drivers operating systems etc. So I think your idea is worthy of consideration.
But, what I can’t help but notice is that I feel its already happening. Major Nuendo+NEK updates happen almost every 2 years for around $550 or so. That’s around $275 a year. So, everyone can complain about subscriptions all the want, but the fact is, we are already doing this for most of our software already!
The other issue is it’s hard to believe after the significant cost outlay of Nuendo + Nek that you do have to pay such high fees every 2 years. I wonder if Steinberg just dropped the retail price to something dirt cheap for the initial “buy-in” and then had a yearly or monthly subscription fee how would people react.
Regardless, something does need to be done to shift the focus away from new features and solving bugs/overall refinement. I’m hopeful the upcoming N 5.2 or N5.5 updates change my opinion on this though…
As far as incentives go I think that a smaller “annual” fee is not a good thing because there are more opportunities for the company to say “next time”, and the smaller fee feels like less of a sacrifice to the customer.
If it’s a fee for any major update the user is forced to consider the purchase “more” because it’s more money, and thus have lower levels of tolerance for errors with the product. And there is likely to be more severe ramifications if the product doesn’t behave as advertised (because the customer spent $400 on it, not $100).
I think the above is true in general. And I think it’s a fairly good argument for keeping it the way it is.
Let’s also not forget that any software company have business plans like any other company. They include product planning / development so I don’t see why the the annual fee would be that much better. As a matter of fact, I think it might be worse for another reason:
Suppose you’re paying $400 for a “major” upgrade right now. And then suppose that we get one of those every 2.5 years. Then let’s say that we’d pay an annual fee of $160 instead. What happens when year #2 sees fewer new features included than year #1? It could be for completely reasonable causes. Not every set of new features will fit into a 1 year time span. So some people will complain. It’s probably clearer if it was the opposite: year 2 has more features than year 1. So the user that spent money year 1 gets less than the user that started paying for upgrades year 2, right?..
Well, I’m a Nuendo fan. I want and need it to thrive. I don’t at all feel duped by current pricing and feel it is still a great value even with the upgrade scheme in place. The fringe features as I call them…have always been ‘use at your own risk’…features like networking sessions and media bay. When we have problems with core features like Video…I start getting concerned.
That said, I’ve spent far more time on the DUC and Digi tech support than…the Nuendo Forum. So I think that says something.
I don’t know how I feel about a subscription fee… I think i’d have to see it in action and debugged first the same way as I do with the updates. I like the idea of pitching in to buy the company way better lol.
I will say this though… I’ve built my entire business around nuendo. I’m doing things here and paying my bills in ways that I simply would not be able to do with out a much higher overhead, be it one time or otherwise, that comes with protools/mac. I have ideas for nuendo functions all the time… I don’t come up with them cause I’m sitting here with nothing to do, I come up with them when I’m bogged down and under deadlines, cause I see how I can make more money faster if they were implemented.
I personally, WOULD pay a little here and there if there were some sort of Steinberg Lobby that could give me access to the developers. If it actually worked and i got my ideas in, it would be money well spent.
