New Pricing for Reason 12 - Upgrades now 199 from 129

[Proboscis]

You know, one of the phrases I hate most on this forum after “RTFM” is “Nobody is forcing you to buy it. “. I really do hate that phrase. It pains me to say that in this case it really is applicable.
Ironic that this post is number 199 hahaha.

How about "Nobody is forcing you to RTFM"

[MrFigg]

You know, one of the phrases I hate most on this forum after “RTFM” is “Nobody is forcing you to buy it. “. I really do hate that phrase. It pains me to say that in this case it really is applicable.
Ironic that this post is number 199 hahaha.

How about "Nobody is forcing you to RTFM"

I know. I never do.

[Popey]

Music press: it is debatable whether reason 12 update cost brings value to rrp users

Reason: let's increase the price by £70 to end the debate

Seems a weird call imo

[Kategra]

I suspect that there will also be a change in marketing strategy with lots more steep discounts, more SALE days. We'll probably see the full license & upgrade price 30-50% off, ~ 1year after new releases, so they would feel much beter deals then they realy are. It will probably entice new users to buy Reason+ as they will se it as a better value than perpetual license.

[dioxide]

A friend of mine bought Lite. The upgrade price from Lite to the full version is pretty steep and now that's his only upgrade path.

R12 isn't worth £199. As much as I love the HR graphics and know how much hard work went into it, it's still an update that a software publisher has to do to keep their software up to date with modern systems. In this case it is 10 year late. If updates often contain 3 key updates, I can't count HR graphics as one of these.

[Jackjackdaw]

They must be pushing people into the sub model but I can't see it as sustainable. As soon as the shine wears off surely people will cancel and just use whatever DAW they owned to begin with. Probably Ableton or Logic and the synths they also own like Arturia or NI . The sub does nothing to grow organic loyalty to the product.

[WillyOD]

Only a madman would defend this move by Reasonass Studios. Hmm... how many times I've paid for an upgrade already since Reason 5 / Record?! Many, many o times. Will I do it again? Yeah, probably, maybe, but only every second year I guess. No way I'm throwing another 200 bucks (yearly in the future) into this software that has no future at the moment and barely works. Reason 12 beta test was... let's just say, yikes-a-rooney, wtf happened?!

[madmacman]

Only a madman would defend this move by Reasonass Studios.

But not madmacman! (just for clarification )

[Popey]

While the roadmap seemed like a great step forward, I have a feeling it's all for Reason+ users. There was no mention of these updates coming to R12 point upgrades, maybe the point upgrades are no longer a thing.

The point updates are coming to R12, regardless of how you bought (sub or perp).

It's good to know these are in 12 but as a point of transparency why is it just perpetual owners getting a price hike?

[Michaellos]

I think the next step from RS will be that you can't skip any point updates. You will have to pay for every previous update you skipped, if you wanna have the newest

[Herman]

Well, by keeping the price at $129 for 20 years, the upgrade price has been going down each year.

$200 today is worth a little less than $129 in 2000.

They are stating the price has remained the same, but that is a lie. Upgrades used to be $99 / 99 EUR. I entered at Reason 3 and paid for every upgrade since. I upgraded to 4 at 99 EUR in 2007, upgraded to 5 for 99 EUR in 2010. Upgrade to 6 was "pay what you want" in 2011!.
They increased the upgrade price by 30% to 129 EUR for Reason 7 in 2013. Now, 8 years later, not 20, they are increasing the upgrade price by a whopping 54% in 2021. Inflation has been very low in this period, so don't believe the lies about this.

Also, they show in their blog post that the number of users have increased a lot the past years. So even at the same price the revenue should be much higher now, therefore the needing the price increase to keep it profitable doesn't add up.

The real reasons for the price increase:

• Because they can. As shown in the blog post, Reason is more popular than ever. It doesn't matter even if they lose 20% of perpetual license customers: the ones that remain will make up for it by the 54% price increase.
• Because they want us to subscribe to Reason+ : you'll still pay the 199 EUR anually that way and it doesn't cost more for them (just more Reason+ downloads)
• Because they want those who don't subscribe to upgrade ASAP -> the price increase at October 1st will get them quick cash in september from the people who were still in doubt about the upgrade.

Personally I might upgrade at 129 EUR mainly for the hi-res graphics. I'll probably skip the next few major versions though.

[Neo]

Most of us want R to be the best it can be. That said this has been the buggiest release to date (IMO!).
I'm sure faith will be restored when we get patch fixes and VST3 arrives in JAN. Right?..
129USD=180AUD
199USD=275AUD

For $275 AUD I wouldn't updgrade for 'QOL' features. The next Reason version would really have to offer an insane amount of added value.
But then again, I would have happily stayed on R10 anyway.

All feels like a bit of damage control. I wonder how many people considered a refund (like myself)
Cant blame user$ for being put off on this unfinished update. Perhaps if they offered a RE it might have eased the disappointment.
BUT In hind sight Ive spent more on plug-ins..

[dasmode]

Another blow to the old user.
Now the old user has to pay half the price of the full license for the upgrade, or pay even more for the subscription. But he has already brought the company $ 1000 or more ... But what will he get for $ 199? These are 3 small features, unclear promises, many bugs.

This is all done in order to quickly receive money without spending a lot of energy on updating.

Probably, the emergence of hacked versions scared Props that they will now receive less money. The old user will now pay for this.

Most likely in a few years there will be only a subscription and only RRP, and the old user will receive a 50% discount for 1 year of subscription.
Unfortunately, Reason as a DAW is very far behind popular DAWs and Props will not be able to modernize it. The only chance they have - to develop RRP.

[DaveyG]

The real reasons for the price increase:

• Because they can. As shown in the blog post, Reason is more popular than ever. It doesn't matter even if they lose 20% of perpetual license customers: the ones that remain will make up for it by the 54% price increase.
• Because they want us to subscribe to Reason+ : you'll still pay the 199 EUR anually that way and it doesn't cost more for them (just more Reason+ downloads)
• Because they want those who don't subscribe to upgrade ASAP -> the price increase at October 1st will get them quick cash in september from the people who were still in doubt about the upgrade.

You missed out "Because they want to sell the company". Add the new subscribers to those who will now rush to upgrade before the price hike and to those who got the R12 upgrade for "free" by taking advantage of the R11 grace period offer and you have, on paper, a huge uplift in customers upgrading to the "superb new release" within days of its release. Looks great to a potential purchaser.

[Eprom]

The way it is going now, the next blog post will announce the price increase for subscriptions. Because that WILL come.

[danc]

I think we need to be careful when comparing standalone Reason prices against the subscription model, thinking that they are financially similar.

Why? Because with the standalone version you can decide to NOT upgrade and carry on using the version you have forever. Whereas... with the subscription you have to keep paying each month.

I am unlikely to give Reason Studios any money until R13 (or when they have something interesting to upgrade for in R12). That could mean I won't have given RS any of my money for like 4 years if I skip from R11 to R13. AND whilst I wait.. I can happily use R11,

[exxx]

look at this!

This is an acceptable price for consumers.

https://shop.presonus.com/Studio-One-Up ... rossgrades

studio ond patch note

5.4 https://blog.presonus.com/index.php/202 ... o-one-5-4/

5.3 https://blog.presonus.com/index.php/202 ... 3-arrived/

5.2 https://blog.presonus.com/index.php/202 ... whats-new/

[Eprom]

Why? Because with the standalone version you can decide to NOT upgrade and carry on using the version you have forever. Whereas... with the subscription you HAVE to keep paying each month

That's my worry.
As soon as enough people are pushed to the subscription model, those prices will increase too. And users will HAVE to pay that unless they want to lose all their work.

[Steedus]

So, yep, tonight I went to have a jam and paused over the R12(+) icon before opening up R11 instead. Don't want a bunch of tracks locked to a version that will expire, and now upgrading mid next year looks to be out unless things change drastically. Maybe if they implement the zoom function like how many people expected - popping out a device at xx% zoom to tweak or something. There's nothing in R12 at the moment I'd pay $280 as an upgrade price for, even though I think Mimic is kinda cool. This is just a hobby. Shame I paid for a year up front really.

[avasopht]

The point updates are coming to R12, regardless of how you bought (sub or perp).

It's good to know these are in 12 but as a point of transparency why is it just perpetual owners getting a price hike?

Erm. Because they've just created the subscriptions, so it's already at a price in line with current times and projections, etc.

They've also not raised the prices of REs, because this is not an across the board price increase on every single PH product, just Reason (for now).

[avasopht]

They are stating the price has remained the same, but that is a lie. Upgrades used to be $99 / 99 EUR. I entered at Reason 3 and paid for every upgrade since. I upgraded to 4 at 99 EUR in 2007, upgraded to 5 for 99 EUR in 2010. Upgrade to 6 was "pay what you want" in 2011!.
They increased the upgrade price by 30% to 129 EUR for Reason 7 in 2013. Now, 8 years later, not 20, they are increasing the upgrade price by a whopping 54% in 2021. Inflation has been very low in this period, so don't believe the lies about this.

They're based in Sweden, so they may be talking about the SEK price.

IIRC, the EUR, GBP and USD prices are based on pessimistic projections of the exchange rate (plus local tax).

I'm not sure if we were paying VAT when buying directly from PH in the early 00s.

[jamespember]

The point updates are coming to R12, regardless of how you bought (sub or perp).

Hi James,
There is a particular person who played a titanic role in regards to Combinator 2. Is there a way I can tip this man???

The Combinator update was a huge team effort - involving plenty of our engineers, and the work was led spectacularly by the usual suspects, Ludde, Mattias and Andy who led the product and design work. <3

[Skimrok]

wow that is steep, maybe its them trying to get subscription + for all and make it dear on the upgrade and buying outright , "its a cunning plan IMO" which seems so transparent then down line say there is more doing subscription+ so value totally swings that way

buying a mobile phone out right in one go is a lot less take up then buying on a contract but in the end costs more in the end

[danc]

wow that is steep, maybe its them trying to get subscription + for all and make it dear on the upgrade and buying outright , "its a cunning plan" which seems so transparent then down line say there is more doing subscription+ so value totally swings that way

ALSO - I do feel like RS are tricking us when they say there are 10x more people using Reason now since R12. Are 99.9% of them just having a free trial of Reason+ and won't give RS any money? Once their trial runs out they will be gone. I don't want to be negative here, as the claim that there are 10x more users is great news for the community - I just want "TRUE" facts... not politician "SLEIGHT OF HAND" facts.

The RS quote is taken from here...

Just to add some context which may be helpful and even surprising to you: roughly 10x as many users are already using Reason 12 a week after launch as compared to how many were using Reason 11 a week after its launch.

[Popey]

It's good to know these are in 12 but as a point of transparency why is it just perpetual owners getting a price hike?

Erm. Because they've just created the subscriptions, so it's already at a price in line with current times and projections, etc.

They've also not raised the prices of REs, because this is not an across the board price increase on every single PH product, just Reason (for now).

I can see that point but they added the price increase so they can add new features etc so I would like to hear from rs why these features cost such a percentage more for perpetual users. It just seems imo like they don't really want perpetual users and this is a big push to get people onto subs. Don't get me wrong life is not "fair" and they have every right to do what they want but as a user getting told they want to be more transparent I thought this is the perfect opportunity to demonstrate that and explain the thought behind such a big increase for one set of buyers (especially considering the 20 years of no upgrades has been proven to be a typo).