Looks like they’re cutting everyone off, even us big enterprise companies, off of the pay-once and then small maintenance for discounted yearly upgrade rights.
Absolutely everyone is going to their monthly Creative Cloud subscription.
Wonder if MS has the balls to go this route with their Office suite soon.
I don’t think it would work for Office even if it works for Adobe. There are a few Office alternatives (OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Google Docs) that are pretty viable for the majority of users, whereas there’s no really good alternatives for Adobe’s stuff.
There will be very soon, if Adobe goes that route.
It’s not if, it’s done. Our software licensing rep advised us Adobe is canceling maintenance contracts.
It really depends on how expensive the sub model is compared to the old way. If it’s more expensive then I’d probably tell Adobe to go fuck themselves and invest in other products.
To be honest I was looking at their sub model not so long ago. I only need Flash and PS* for what I do and for $480 / year for the two of them it worked out as an alright deal, however, I would only be going for one license. I can see a lot of the bigger companies just dumping the maintenance contracts and looking for alternates.
Can someone explain what maintenance contracts are? It’s a piece of software-what kind of maintenance does it need?
How are things different from if an individual purchased photoshop?
Government and large companies pay a fraction of the initial price each year for discounted or free upgrade rights when a new version comes out. It ensures lock-in with software.
Is there a press release on this somewhere yet? Does this mean they’re also getting rid of the normal retail box distribution as well? I’ve been buying upgrade boxes for either every version or every other version for a bit now. When they announced the Cloud stuff, I ran some numbers and decided I was better off in the long-term buying an upgrade version of the Master Collection instead of going subscription. Going to be pretty upset if they decided to cancel the retail upgrade boxes (which you’re only able to buy from Adobe anyway as of CS6) after I sunk the money into it.
I haven’t really looked into this, but how does their cloud system work? I know that some of the largest files on my computer are my Photoshop files. Won’t this kill performance if everything it locked into their cloud storage?
Isn’t the whole idea behind having a contract that you can’t just, you know, cancel it?
Government and large companies pay a fraction of the initial price each year for discounted or free upgrade rights when a new version comes out. It ensures lock-in with software.
It also, in the EU at least, dramatically changes the picture in terms of IP law.
I suppose I’ve done my last CS upgrade for a good long while.
Yeah, this may be what’s driving Adobe, Microsoft and others to shift to subscriptions. Here’s the key comment from that EU article:
It’s not so much a matter of file storage (although I think there may be some as part of it). Think of it as more of a subscription service. Instead of buying a Creative Suite, installing it on your computer, and using it as long as you like, you subscribe to the Creative Cloud, get access to the latest versions of all the Creative Suite applications, and can keep using them as long as you keep up your subscription. You cancel your subscription, you can no longer use the software.
The software all resides on your computer, so there’s no performance hit, it just does an DRM-type check when you’re online to make sure you can keep using it.
It’s a somewhat attractive option to those who can’t afford a full version of Creative Suite, those who like to run the latest versions at all times, or those who only need to use the software for projects that don’t go more than a few months. For those of us who use it all the time, but don’t necessarily feel compelled to upgrade every time Adobe puts out a new version (particularly with the x.5 releases), it’s definitely not better (at least in my opinion). It’s also not that great an alternative for those of us who have already paid for their full version (which costs quite a bit) years ago and who get the latest versions just by buying an upgrade version (which is much cheaper).
I’d also be interested in this. I can take advantage of my wife’s grad student status to buy a cheap(er) copy of photoshop to replace my old version for a little while yet. It would be good to know if I have to do that sooner rather than later.
My initial thought was that it was more another shot at trying to reduce the amount of piracy. I know Photoshop, and quite a few of the other suite programs, had huge numbers of pirated versions out there. I don’t know how effective their DRM has been over the last few years, but I would think that forcing everyone into subscriptions would reduce their piracy rates even further.
Not to mention it probably ends up generating a lot more revenue for Adobe over the longer-term.
So… I guess this means I need to backup my CS6 collection off their server then? How annoying.
Maintenance agreements are usually done by governement/enterprise.
Looks like this is now official, Creative Suite will no longer be getting any updates beyond bug fixes.
Adobe also announced that the company will focus creative software development efforts on its Creative Cloud offering moving forward. While Adobe Creative Suite® 6 products will continue to be supported and available for purchase, the company has no plans for future releases of Creative Suite or other CS products. Focusing development on Creative Cloud will not only accelerate the rate at which Adobe can innovate but also broaden the type of innovation the company can offer the creative community.
I had hoped that they would be keeping boxed versions around because I’m not sure if every government agency and educational institution is going to be able to hop on the software as a service bandwagon, but unless they’re hiding something, it looks like that isn’t happening.
I’ve seen several articles that run the numbers and say that CC ends up being cheaper in the long run, but they all use the full retail cost of the Suites and seem to forget that the upgrade costs are significantly cheaper. For Master Collection, sure it’s $2,599 to get the full version, but the upgrade from CS5 was only $1,049.
And make no mistake, we’re clearly looking at a “cooking the frog” scenario. Rates may look somewhat affordable now ($50/month or $600/year), especially compared to boxed costs, but a couple of years from now when everyone who is on CS6 starts switching, don’t be surprised if they start jacking up the price slowly every year.
What I’m not sure about is how this model is going to work for stuff like, say, Lightroom. I care about having lightroom, but not about photoshop so much. Currently Lightroom 4 at full retail is $150. The cheapest possible way to get a year of Lightroom is $240. That’s a ridiculous markup.