I suppose there is the factor that the crowd of Reason users who barely knew what VSTs were before 9.5 are now exploring other opportunities which would affect sales for RE. As far as success of REs I suppose the definition of that may have shifted as there aren't many big players actively involved anymore.CV based devices might still be selling being the only thing pretty much unaffected by VST. That said I think overall sales loss for some developers has a lot to do with the many things happening this year. Both the addition of VST support and Reason 10 releasing in the same year would of course have a noticeable affect on sales. I feel there's a chance that will shift in the near future.eXode wrote: ↑22 Nov 2017
But selling single REs in the shop vs including them in a Reason upgrade is quite different from a competition viewpoint, as a RE developer you cannot compete with that, period. But sure, I'm still willing to accept that.
However considering props appraisal of the RE platform we had no real clues about VST plugins or the subscriptions (just look at ReSpire), in fact I'd go so far to say that they were not being completely honest about their perception of the RE platforms succes (or lack thereof). If REs were so sucessful I doubt we would have seen VST support, or subscriptions for that matter. Subs is probably just an attempt at trying to gain interest in the platform after opening up to VST, at developers cost. Too early to draw conclusions? Sure but declining overall sales plus minuscule revenue from subs doesn't make for a good outset.
I understand they are a business, but how about not keeping RE developers in the dark, so that they too can make informed business decisions.
If the product is good, people will want it, even if they already have something similar. Enthusiasts tend to acquire multiples of the same thing. So they included a wavetable synth in Reason 10. There are still things say Expanse does differently and so there are people who will still buy it just like they buy multiple Moog emulations. Subscriptions as of now probably haven't caused much harm, but of course that's not something you can really tell much about yet. I honestly don't think subscriptions will be popular enough to prevent people from buying REs, but rather the opposite; bringing a bit of (possibly minuscule or maybe decent) income from people who probably wouldn't have made purchases anyway. I think a better picture will be painted in January/February about how things are moving. I'll say though the faster the SDK catches up to VST capabilities, the better it will be for RE devs.