The best part is that Cubase 9 was released with a bigger focus on stability but some people are refusing to upgrade because there’s apparently not enough new features.
I chose not to upgrade because stability (or lack thereof) is still a big issue. And ditto for the numerous, known annoying bugs that have existed for years and the overall sluggishness compared to other DAWs.
I would gladly have upgraded if they addressed these issues and did nothing else.
FYI, Cubase 9 just got the new video engine – no additional news for Cubase 8.5 so far – Cubase 9.0.30 maintenance update - Cubase - Steinberg Forums
they really are quite nasty aren’t they!! the video engine should’ve been issued for 8.5 at the same time as 9,
disgusting behavior…desperately trying to force peeps on to 9,
they don’t care about long term users because they already have our money…
I’m not really sure what to say about this, Shadowfax… because I’m still kind of surprised by Steinberg’s behavior and performance. Part of me is still holding out a tiny hope that they will make good on their promise for Cubase 8.5, because it’s the RIGHT thing to do… but I doubt they’ll do it. I think we are seeing a Steinberg that has made some decisions lately – for whatever reason – to destroy their credibility, sense of responsibility and decency to long-term customers. Their silence on this issue says a lot too. They’ve even given up talking to us about it.
FYI Nuendo 7 hasn’t received the update either yet, and they were told they would get it 4-6 weeks after Nuendo 8 was released, and we’re now OVER 8 weeks for them (let alone 1 year and 4 months since the announcement of the issue!!!)!!! So it’s clear that Steinberg can’t meet a SINGLE deadline of their own timeline! They might as well stop mentioning dates at all, ever. The ONLY date they are good at meeting is a NEW yearly release date to collect upgrade fees.
But I like to consider myself an optimistic person and hope that maybe 8.5 will be a really nice big surprise in a few days or weeks. However, I doubt it. Again, their silence is telling. At least with Nuendo 7 they’ve recently indicated that it’s on the way.
Sadly, unless they turn this ship around, they have essentially lost me as a customer, and I regret sending them any more money recently. I regretfully already upgraded to Cubase 9 when I should NOT have done that, and Cubase 9 up to this point has been LESS reliable than 8.5. I own a bunch of their other products, but at least as of this moment, they have basically lost my trust as a company due to this whole fiasco. It says a lot about them as a company IMO.
Frankly, they need to STOP this foolish yearly update cycle where they release half-baked features, introduce various new problems, are sluggish at fixing older problems, and sometimes fail to fix major issues (like the whole video engine situation) in a timely manner, and basically fail to meet EVERY SINGLE time estimate they’ve given us… repeatedly.
Whoever the Cubase project manager is at Steinberg, needs to be fired. And whoever decides the roadmap, priorities and resources in general needs to be fired (if that’s a different person). In fact, as far as I’m concerned, they ARE fired, at least from my wallet, because I will not send another dollar to Steinberg unless they provide the new video engine for 8.5 as they originally promised.
I can say this with confidence: Cubase is no longer going to be my primary DAW. I have spent a lot of time investigating and testing other DAWs recently, and the marketplace for great DAW software is better than ever. Steinberg has a great legacy to be sure, but they have squandered their good will with me, and I can promise there will be NO more revenue and upgrade fees from me going forward, unless they do the right thing here.
P.S.: And the irony or at least very bad timing of Steinberg’s 40%-off sale of upgrades to Cubase 9 is also very telling. What does that say about Steinberg as a company? Even if they didn’t explicitly mean to say it, they have really blown it IMO – by not delivering the promised 8.5 video engine, combined with a 40% sale for Cubase 9 (and NOTE that the discount does NOT apply to Cubase Pro users!), combined with missing every single timeline they indicated, combined with their deafening silence on the issue, they are showing a surprising insensitivity and even disdain to long-term customers. But even more so, they are showing us a company that is in a crisis – with a lack of good leadership and ever-diminishing professionalism.
Boohooooo
it’s sad that it’s come to this, but as I said, they have our money so there is not much we can do except move on, they may still introduce the video engine to 8.5 later, (if they have any principles) but for now they are trying desperately to get peeps to move to 9…maybe this indicates that not as many people upgraded as they hoped…)
FYI, not that it matters, and not to beat a dead horse once again, but I’ve now tested the new video engine in Cubase 9.0.30 and compared it to Studio One and Reaper, and the video playback uses 2x to 5x as much CPU on my system (fresh install of win 10, very powerful workstation, RME drivers, same video files). And that was with pesky small video files. Higher resolution takes even more CPU. Your situation may be different than mine, of course, due to OS, drivers, plugins, configuration, etc… but in my situation, Studio One and Reaper run circles around Cubase 9 in terms of raw video performance. I have not yet tested it against Pro Tools, but I imagine it would be a similar story. Read from all that what you will, but it cements my decision to reduce Cubase to backup DAW now, and eventually phase it out. I’m done. Best of luck to all of you!
P.S.: And so even if Steinberg were to release the new engine for Cubase 8.5, which would be a very nice surprise, it would likely have similar, or identical performance, unless they spend a lot of time optimizing it… which is doubtful. So I’m not sure it would be truly useful to get the new engine in 8.5 anyway, especially for people who have high-CPU projects… it will easily cause glitches if you are already near the CPU redline. It’s just a mess IMO. So disappointing. Anyway, take care, all.
good for you mate though I do think that eventually they will provide the video engine to 8.5, I believe they are holding off to try and get more upgrade money before they update 8.5…very questionable business practice!! 
I think the branch 8 updates are done. Finals have been released and no new versions will come. Also ASIO CPU utilization is something else than CPU load, you can measure CPU load in the taskmanager.
so are you actually saying that Steinberg has dumped on every one who has Cubase 8.5?
I suspect life moved on.
Can someone provide a link to an official statement that 8.xx would be equiped with the new engine?
Cubase is supposed to be equipped with a video engine my friend…whether it’s an old or new one it is supposed to have a video engine,
they took money from people who bought cubase with a video engine,
I get your angle, but where is the SB statement?
You’ll have to dig around to find it, but if you followed the drama when it happened you’d see the progression and it was obvious, and they’ve also updated various statements over the last 14 months to continually lower expectations. But even in October 2016, after various delays and poor communication, for example, they were still saying it would come out for Cubase 8.5… this was a given statement: “This will enable us to provide the new video engine still in Q1 2017, which would be in accordance with the current schedule. Consequently, the engine will be available for future releases of Cubase/Nuendo and in cost-free maintenance updates for current Cubase Pro 8.5.x/Nuendo 7.0.x versions.”
Previously, in April 2016, they said, “Independent of the current potential security issue, we already started working on a new video engine a few months ago. The discontinuation of the QuickTime support by Apple forces us to invest even more resources in order to provide a solution at the earliest possible moment. This, however, will still take a couple of months, but we’re striving for the availability of a Quicktime-independent video engine still this year.”
Additionally, you can follow the various updates on the subject in general tech support bulletin, where they mentioned that “We are already working on a solution that will supersede the QuickTime dependency of video functions in Cubase/Nuendo. However, we cannot name a time frame yet.” – this was inaccurate because in the forum they did name rough time frames several times, missing their own targets. This was long before Cubase 9 was released, and subsequent updates kept pushing the release date back until finally…
…they dropped the bad news…
“Unfortunately the schedule as described by Timo Wildenhain and the goal to have the new engine in Q1 2017 could not be realised and hence the new video engine did not make it into the final maintenance update of 8.5.”
There’s more evidence, but this is what I could dig up in a few minutes – but the bottom line is that they presented the solution that they would be releasing the new video engine for the life cycle of BOTH Cubase 8.5 and Nuendo 7.5 (which is also still missing the update BTW as of today), at one point suggesting the solution would be provided in a "couple of months’, which would have been over ONE year ago. Check the Nuendo 7 forum as well. Read into that what you want.
What if you just replace Cubase 8.5’s videoengine.dll with the one in 9?
what the heck are you on mate…Steinberg have taken money from people for a DAW WITH a video engine…if they fail to provide the DAW that they advertised as HAVING a video engine then they are just as bad as the German company that fiddled the automobile emissions so they could sell illegal cars…If they do not provide what they have taken money for then words would escape me to explain how low they are…
interesting comment 
Which version of V8 still had QuickTime support?