Well, we say that, but at the end of the day from Steinberg’s perspective it is what we do that counts. The last time a .5 came out I’d had enough and skipped updating. That was due to the current state of version 6.x and the newer version not having enough new features I could count on to make it worth while. Then I got version 7 instead because of VCAs, literally mostly because of that, and maybe you know how that went.
So the real question is how do users react to this? If people just keep paying then SB keeps doing what its doing. It’s that simple.
There was a thread that was pretty telling in the Cubase section. The gist of it was basically “fix bugs first, introduce new features later”. Most users seemed to agree, which they have done for years and years. Steinberg’s response was to poll the users… For the most wanted new features! The comment was “Oh, well, of course we care about bugs, that goes without saying”. It’s like they didn’t really understand what was said or coldly calculated that users would get distracted by shiny new features as they always are.
I’m skeptic regarding subscriptions. If you look at Avid’s userbase the users have been by and large incredibly unhappy about it. Part of it was the messy way things were communicated and structured, but the other part has been that people paid upfront for new features and haven’t seen much at all as a result.
In Avid’s case, if I remember correctly, accounting issues pretty much forced them to change the way they charge for support and updates/upgrades, and of course it also yielded a different cash flow. But if you ignore those two issues, legal/accounting - because Steinberg is in Germany, and cash flow - because Steinberg isn’t suffering like Avid is/was, I don’t really see a reason why we can’t have our cake and eat it too. There’s simply no apparent reason for not prioritizing fixing bugs quickly and adding features later, other than increasing profit.
I think this is very relative to the perspective you view it from though. To me, as an engineer in the US where PT is everywhere in post, Nuendo + Windows + home assembled computer is dirt-cheap. So, relative to the competition’s DAW it’s not a big deal.
BUT, almost all work I did last year was on PT, not Nuendo, and that makes it a very different proposition. Why would I want to pay in advance for the DAW that produces the least income? From that standpoint, and as you point out, in comparison to other software like Resolve, it is indeed “expensive”, or at least not as appealing. Then again, if it’s a matter of just dividing your average upgrade cost over time and making that a subscription it’ll likely feel cheap again… i.e. a major version costs the average user $240 (just to make it simple) every two years = $10/month. From SB’s perspective one also has to wonder if it’s worth it though, in terms of restructuring accounting etc to accomodate for it.
That is indeed pretty incredible. We have to remember though that they have an entire eco-system and make their money off of hardware sales. In that sense it’s akin to Logic/Apple.
Cubase is not the childish playground but has to perform similarly solid in music and scoring for film situations without a hickup. And so we Nuendo users expect the same. Be on a stable edge of technology to do our best work using the best tools given the best workflow standards currently available in the industry. Every feature that saves us time and creates better quality is worth money. INCLUDING fixing bugs that hinder productivity and destroy work or make it more difficult to achieve a goal. Every bug can be a huge time drain when you try to pin down the problem and working around it.