I’ve been a Cubase user for more years than I care to remember. I upgraded to 10.5 pro from 8.5 pro in September at a cost of £171. To upgrade to Cubase 11 pro will now cost me a further £85, making a total of £256. However, if I hadn’t upgraded when I did, my upgrade path now from version 4 thru to version 10 would be only £136, saving me a whopping £120!!
Something doesn’t taste right to me.
Fair? It sounds appalling!
I started using Cubase on floppies on an Atari, so am not a newbie to the software
However, I have been trying to upgrade from V10 pro to 10.5 pro, and could find no prices anywhere.
Stienberg’s sales team seems to be working on another planet (from home probably and just drinking cups of tea).
Where can I find upgrade prices? (It’s a nightmare)
Maybe I want to upgrade to 11pro, from 10pro , but can find no pricing anywhere…
I love Cubase, but their lack of business sense makes me want to go elsewhere… Probably not Presonus Studio One pro… .(or maybe there is no real alternative)
I also threw loads of dosh at Steinberg recently for Halion 6… Great marketing policies Steinberg… (NOT)
if you go to their shop online and press buy now, it gives you options for new/upgrades and clear pricing
shows the 10.5 - > 11 upgrade is £85.
shows the 10 > 11 upgrade is £136
wrong.
4-10 > 11 upgrade is £136…that hits different
I find it very unfair, given that anyone from 4 to 10 has the same upgrade price, while only 10.5 has a cheaper upgrade price. It’s not relative to your version of cubase. So it’s not fair for 10 users to upgrade to get a couple more features, when those 4 users have the same upgrade price for many more features.
It doesn’t make sense to upgrade. Are other DAWs doing the same thing for upgrades as well?
I find it fair, in fact i quite like it - it’s putting less pressure to keep up to date for solely financial reasons. I would update software in the past in fear of being left behind and having such a financial jump, so this is great to not feel that burden if the pricing remains.
If the new features are worth the price you pay, that’s all what matters. If we start questioning whats ‘fair’ then where does it stop? i.e. i get very little value out of this new update, whereas the next person it may be worth 5x more to them with the new exporting functions.
You could also complain it’s unfair in summer when there’s 40% off too, with this reasoning. Why should people who wait pay less? - same argument.
Someone who hasn’t updated since v4 wouldn’t have had all the years using the newer stuff, so they don’t ‘gain’ any unfair advantage. I can understand if your price has increased and you’re complaining then i would find it unfair, but that’s not the case.
Also, a critical aspect to this financially means that your current license will not devalue as quick. I think that’s great for everyone who supports perpetual licensing, as there’s a real value to keeping hold of your license.
I think this was a new addition as I am pretty certain (correct me if I am wrong) but there were more scales for older versions upgrade paths, the older the Cubase, the higher the cost for the upgrade. Now it seems they have gone down the Reason Studios/NI path, one price to upgrade from one full versions back to the latest.
Upgrading Cubase 6 to 11 for that price (£136) isn’t a bad deal at all, from my calculations, if upgrading to each release on the day, it would cost around £650 in total.
It’s just a shame that if you upgrade on the release date, you end up paying a lot over the years.
That truly sucks! Happened to me as well although I upgraded from 9.5 to 10.5 in July when they had a 30% discount. That plus the upgrade to 11 would still be more expensive than if I had waited and upgraded from 9.5 to 11 directly instead. 
Oh yeah, it’s cheap now to update or upgrade from old versions.
They had more differentiated update paths before (more expensive for older versions). Then they also got critique that it didn’t pay off to “jump over” versions; people felt a bit like it’s a bit of a pseudo subscription model (if they wait for a later version, they need to pay more).
Now they changed it, there are now only 2 update paths (and only 1 upgrade path from Artist/Elements respectively). But now you give them critique that it’s too cheap to update from old versions… 
(because you previously paid more - otherwise I suppose you would not complain).
Regarding the update price from the latest version: it’s the same x.0 update price as usual, since many years.
You paid for the update, because it was worth it. Now it’s cheaper, but that does not hurt you, does it? Prices are always subject to change in a free market. They want old customers to update too, instead of getting nothing or even losing them to the competitors due to too high update prices. Instead of being jealous that people now can buy something cheaper than you did, you could think that Steinberg is now generous to old customers?
I’m a hobbyist who messes about with music for a few months, then go years without touching it. I’ve been debating getting back for a few years now and had trouble justifying the cost of Cubase for as little as I’m likely to use it. The fact that I can jump several versions of Cubase to get something compatible with the latest OS without paying say $100/yr equivalent to keep it up to date is a huge plus and one of the primary reasons I decided to finally buy Cubase (pro). Maybe I’ll stick with music for longer this time. 
I realize elements is much cheaper to keep up to date than pro, but there were a few features in pro that sounded nice… I really hope Steinberg doesn’t change their update policy as that was the main selling point for me.
In short, a professional is likely to keep up to date and as such pay more over time, which makes sense to me. More casual users who don’t need to keep up to date save some money. Makes sense to me.