Why is there no upgrade path from Cubase to Nuendo? This really makes no sense. I love Cubase, I’ve started using it for film sound, and I’d like to upgrade to Nuendo. Why do I have to pay full price for Nuendo? …and worse yet, why do I have to pay extra (on top of full price for Nuendo) to get Cubase features in Nuendo (i.e. the NEK)? This just seems totally backward to me. At a bare minimum, if I already have Cubase, I shouldn’t have also pay for the NEK. But you should do even better than that. Oh well, your ridiculous pricing is forcing me (and others, I’m sure) to keep using some other company’s DAW for post production sound even though I’d much rather use Nuendo.
There is no upgrade path (I agree that this is shame) from C to N because of nature of both application - N is much more Audio Post related and this is main reason why NEK is not included. It is almost logical thing - there is many discussion on forum with a lot good explanations by Timo.
BTW - Nuendo is not expensive - Take a detail look on AVID price list and capabilities of “basic” ProTools 11 
Some of the key features of Nuendo (for post) are included in stock PT11. I still have to use PT11 for some post work because Cubase lacks some of these features. I’d happily move to Nuendo if there was an upgrade path. I think it simply makes no sense that they don’t support this. It’s not a technical issue at all. It’s just a simple business and marketing decision.
The price of Nuendo itself isn’t as important as the price of NEK. Cubase owners shouldn’t have to purchase NEK in addition to Nuendo. It’s just silly. A cubase owner who buys Nuendo should get NEK for free (or at a reduced price if their cubase is an older version). This just seems completely obvious.
I have been a Nuendo user since version 1. The Nek idea has always bugged me from when it first came out. Paying for the flagship should not ever be a downgrade on features and the a la carte style with Nuendo has been argued by Steinberg but makes me feel uneasy. $350 for each upgrade cycle is pretty steep too considering buying Cubase (or other competitors) is/are at or not much more than Nuendo’s upgrade price.
It would not apply to me but I think there should definitely be an upgrade path from Cubase to Nunedo. And for that matter, a discount for Nuendo users to add Cubase. As was said earlier, it seems like it would be a natural marketing move.
And I agree that a PT system that is up to what Nuendo can do is very expensive and is still not quite there in many regards.
Dean
I thought this one had been put to bed a long time ago!
The NEK is not there to make users pay more, but to pay LESS! The point being that there are a heck of a lot of Post users who simply do not need, want or care about the various synths & MIDI editing stuff the NEK brings, so the idea of Nuendo minus NEK was introduced for this circumstance - remember that Nuendo with NEK is the “full” version, and Nuendo sans NEK is the optional install/purchase and not the other way around!!
It is baffling to me how difficult to comprehend this concept has been for some here. Neil hits the nail on the head.
Chewy
Not entirely. Suppose 70% of nuendo users don’t buy the nek, and suppose the alternative was to get rid of it and sell the total packaged upgrade at 300 instead of 400 (where 150 is the nek portion):
(70x250)+(30x400)=17500+12000=29500
versus
100x300=30000
You see it? More profit with a lower price. And with that lower price comes less confusion, less nuisance, less work to program/manage the separate versions. A win for everyone. Basic maths. And ‘yes’, in the old forum it was said that about 70% don’t bother with the nek.
Also, a new copy of cubase used to be about $500. So a user was faced with the prospect of either paying 150 for the nek features plus the next version of nuendo all rolled into one app only, or pay another 100 and have two apps and licenses - one for post, and one for music.
But if you were a user that bought nuendo 5 for example, with the nek, and then was faced with upgrading to v6 with or without the nek you WILL look at the additional features that are included in the separate portions - the main daw and the nek portion. And if you decide you don’t need the extra nek features what happens? You can’t use the previous nek functionality in the new version, right? Hardly convenient.
Lastly, if you’re a post facility of course you don’t care about $150 in savings. Why would you? It’s peanuts. In New York if you can’t charge that for an hours work in your space then you don’t have clients over period, because it’s too expensive. Which leaves working from a space with less overhead and no clients attending, in which case your fee amounts to working two to three hours for that portion of the upgrade. In either case the amount is so low that it’s pointless to quibble over, meaning why not just get rid of the separate pricing because it simply doesn’t matter.
Now let’s hope the powers that run this place declare that we’ve had this discussion one too many times and promptly lock this thread. This is a forum for discussion, not politics.