I don’t get the impression HALion 4 has sold very well. I contacted one of the music magazines about running a tutorial and they said words to the effect that there was little demand as not many of their readers used it.
A shame as it’s a good program
I think that Halion’s price point is really a problem for many people, especially compared to Kontakt.
Some could say that H4’s price is comparable to Kontakt’s but in practice it isn’t. I don’t know anyone who paid the full price for Kontakt recently. People usually buy it as part of Komplete or in one of NI’s countless sales. Just a few days ago you could get Kontakt for less than 190€ in the annual Black Friday sale. If you wait for the next upgrade sale (usually around easter) then you can get the entire Komplete package for the price of a single Halion license.
Too bad Steinberg doesn’t do any sales. Too bad for potential new customers and really disappointing for existing customers. This looks absolutely like a ‘take it or leave it’ approach from Steinberg’s sales department and it seems like not many people take the first option.
But a sampler needs a critical mass of users or no one would ever create good content for it. But without good content available nobody would buy a new sampler - especially if the well established market leader only costs 2/3 the price (in practice). This problem can only be solved by bringing the sampler to the people. A much lower price point would make more people curious about Halion. Where are the usual Black Friday sales? Where are the special prices for Cubendo users? No jubilee sales? Where are the attractive bundles with additional content or with other Steinberg synths?
Well, take it or leave it, I guess.
I have Cubase 6.5 and bought the Absolute VSTi set recently. This includes Halion Sonic 1.6. Then I noticed with Sonic 1.5.2 or greater you can upgrade to Halion 4 for a good price.
So now I have the Absolute VSTi collection and H4 for the price of H4 alone.