Proboscis wrote: ↑13 Feb 2020
And Yonotan, I think you mentioned you are on R9, thinking about upgrading to R12. Might I suggest that you hold off. There's no need to reward stupidity and glacial development rollouts. You've already missed out on six month of using it, and since it's all about a shameless cash grab for the parent company of Reason Studios, I would not be at all surprised if we saw an R12 in late 2020/early 2021. And just think, upgrading from R9 to R12 will buy you a HEAP more features, and some devices. Three pathetic releases = one pretty good one.
Of course I deny any responsibility for your choice, should Reason Studios announce a subscription only model or a tired-pricing structure based on where you upgrade from. We might well say 'no, never!' but a lot of the 'no nevers' over the years have come into being with this company.
I am actually on R10.4 so even less inclined to punch out € 129. From R9 would be a good enough deal.
I already have Parsec 2, RDK, Reason Bass, Polar, Rotary, Quad player, Drum Seq player, Layers, Radical keys.
Dont have Complex, Scenic, Oumph, Layer Waves, Processed Pianos, Step player.
189 would actually be a fair price as RS tempted me to upgrade Parsec for 39 more than already full price, RDK and RBass at 80 when already got refills. Luckily I skipped the Piano upgrade. Nothing of my REs was in another bundle. Layers they had a 49 deal..
But it is not as if all other ppl pay blindly 129 and just me getting a cut in Suite. It is meant to be a fair deal, taking into account what I already bought. It is meant to be a smarter system.
How can anyone be pissed off then mesmerizes me. Its just to make as many as possible the sense it is a crazy good deal and get as many longtime supporters also on the Suit bundle boat as many tutorials will make combinators etc with stuff from stock Suite.
I am not die hard in need for the missing devices in the RE collevtion as I think 249 is not justified when going from R10.
All on R9 and below can easily justify Suite even if they almost own most of them but Scenic and some other RR, because they get all the R10 devices and improvements of workflow and gets up to date to use latest RE, and gets Vst optimation and a Rack Plugin and whatever comes along next. It is a no brainer for those.
RS made a huge amount of REs and pushed them very very hard and had several Deals of the week. And now after Suite they have slowed that down. So, obvioulsly RS hade Suite in the pipeline all allong and that made their marketing very cynical. And it was not years after that they put them in bundle or Suite.
Peocessed Pianos was very near the release date and still they wanted is to upgrade. I passed that one as I tjink 39 is not a good deal if owning the refills. And anyone could use that code.
So, as much as I like the platform with Reason and REs, I still stand ny my opinion that it is cynical way to go about business the way they made so many RE and doing hard marketing to get as many as possible to buy them, while tjey knew they made them all to put in a crazy deal called Suite. Thus excluding and making ppl feel like being tricked and fooled by smart marketing. And not a single thought on how to make as many as possible feeling it was not in vain to buy their upgrades and REs.
They as decent company would offcourse tjink out a way to compensate and make as many as possible to complete their collection of what is now Stock devices in Suite. It is simple math. They could go the road of honest goodwill (business of 2020s) or create a bad vibe.
The bad vibes are valid no matter how many users feels like winners in the lottery. You can create win-win or win-lose situation, where the latter makes for conflicts and distrust. It is same with politics. So I call win-lose both marketing and politics, something of the past and not of the future. Then ppl can say its just ordinary capitalist market. Well...in absurdum I would say and see where it brought us today...more polarization and less unity and goodwill. Within the market you can see users as supporters of development or just plain as customers that you need to nudge to buy more just because profit no matter the loyalty or trust or good will in the long run. And I say it is bad business even from strict economic sense, in the long run. That is what I try to express.
My personal horizon, well I surely can get by without the missing devices, and I do praise that they have an subscription service on RE.
So it is not black or white. Just that many more than me react to the heavy marketing strategy as of lately, where they push hard just to suddenly exclude you from a way better deal.
So in long run it tells us to never trust them and never buy any more of their devices if not in a super deal. One day maybe Suite owners will get pissed off because of an even better deal which excludes them, even if hard to see now.