Hello!
I saw some strange math on Steinberg’s page.
$349 to crossgrade from Halion 6 to Absolute 6 (includes Halion 7).
$99 to upgrade from Halion 6 to Halion 7. But then…
$349 to crossgrade from Halion 7 to Absolute 6 (this already includes Halion 7).
$349 to crossgrade from Padhsop 2 or Retrologue 2 to Absolute 6 as if Halion were the same price for both plugins (Padshop 2 $129, Retrologue 2 $99 ).
$449 for the Absolute 6 itself, so everything without Halion is worth $100? Absurd!
So why not calculate the products the customer has already purchased to reduce the price? Spitfire Audio does this, and it’s a friendlier approach, and I’m sure more customers will consider buying Steinberg libraries instead of looking for goodies in someone else’s garden.
EDIT (added from linked post):
I have Padshop, Retrologue, Triebwerk, Hypnotic Dance, Dark Planet and Halion bought separately, but the price for crossgrade is the same as if I had only one of them. Let’s calculate = 349 + 129 + 99 + 49 + 29 +49 = 704, but I cannot get Absolute for more friendly price rather than pay twice for things I already have.
You probably should have done the calculations before you bought stuff.
Buying individual instruments almost always adds up to more than buying a bundle.
The benefit is that you don’t end up with a lot of stuff you’re not going to use.
I agree that someone should get a price break if they’ve already bought individual instruments,
but Steinberg doesn’t seem to work that way.
You are free to sell off any licences you don’t need after you buy Absolute 6, which can help to offset the cost.
I think the crossgrade costs to Absolute might be revisited once Steinberg Licensing has proper support for upgrading/crossgrading one Steinberg Licensing product to another. However, the discount to go from HALion to Absolute has never been that generous - Steinberg seems to intend the discount for Absolute to apply to outright purchases.
If you want Absolute, the trick is to wait until there is a sale. I bought Absolute 4 in a 50% off sale. Even though I have subsequently paid full price to update to Absolute 5 and now Absolute 6 rather than waiting for sale prices for the updates, I’ve still paid slightly less than a full-price purchase of Absolute 6!
My savings have been slightly offset by buying Electric Bass and Backbone separately when Steinberg showed no signs of adding them to Absolute (they were added in Absolute 5). Now that Backbone is on Steinberg Licensing, I may well sell that licence - and I will likely sell Electric Bass once that licence migrates to Steinberg Licensing.
I am in the exact same situation. What they are giving us for Halion 6 is laughable.
They don’t have a system to calculate what you own, because I also own Cubase Pro and between the two I own more than half of Absolute 6 already… I posted this on another site already, too.
Unfortunately their system is bit kludgy at the moment, with their 5 apps you download to manage everything, thinking about working that value out for the customer is the last thing on their minds.
Considering most of those instruments are really old now, Steinberg should be throwing discounts around a little more liberally.
It is frustrating to see other competitors able to handle that no problem like NI or Waves or whoever.
Yes, I have more than half of Absolute too. So it would be humanly correct if we have ability to upgrade our bunch that matches Absolute bundle for the same Absolute upgrade price, but still having only these libraries we bought as we don’t need everything from Absolute.
If they were giving more discount on Absolute for already owning (example) Backbone + Groove Agent + HALion, then they would need to remove them in preference to a single Absolute license when purchasing the crossgrade.
And I think that’s probably the issue here - I think only one product can be checked, and upgraded against a single download code.
Plus trying to maintain a basic set of SKU’s for resellers must play a part (i.e. Music Shops, Online Retailers etc). As they don’t want a complicated list, nor do they want to be holding stock for so many versions of essentially the same end product.
If you could only buy products from Steinberg themselves and the shop element had history of all your purchases for the past 5-10 years, then the system could start applying additional rewards/discounts such as spitfire and other companies do.
But currently we’re in a situation where people could be upgrading from second hand, or unregistered dongles, and download keys purchased from resellers/music stores. And i’ve the impression that the Steinberg shop system is separate from their licensing system.
I don’t know how true that is with the new licensing though, Perhaps the new system is more integrated and there will be scope for stuff like this in future?
I still don’t know how they would manage that with their resellers though. It’s not so good when you’re undercutting your own partners and they couldn’t be pushing out additional SKU’s for Items to allow for however many products you already own.
