Adobe Kills Creative Suite, Goes Subscription-Only

While this may not be the dumbest idea ever....it certainly ranks right up there with the best (worst) of them. Thanks to everyone that sent this one in.

In a major shift for its business and its customers, Adobe Systems on Monday announced it no longer will sell its Creative Suite software as it moves instead to the $50-per-month Creative Cloud and other subscription plans. "We have no current plans to release another perpetual release of the CS tools and suites. Creative Cloud is going to be our sole focus moving forward," said Scott Morris, senior director of product marketing for Creative Cloud.

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I'll likely be using that for work, but sure as shit I'm not going to bother with that mess at home.

OMGWTF.

Hold on...I need to give Adobe the Bird.

LeninGHOLA said:

I'll likely be using that for work, but sure as shit I'm not going to bother with that mess at home.

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Yeah, for personal or lower budget professional work, I don't see how this would make sense. People are just going to stick with CS6 and call it a day.

For bigger companies and firms this might makes sense but anyone that uses their products at home, this is a worthless money pit. They just want to suck all the money they can out of you and give you the minimal amount of work in developing new and better software.

Guess we'll be running our existing version of CS at the office for a long time.

Also, think this will result in an increase in piracy. Only way to get a full copy of CS will be to pirate an older version.

Always online?

nutzo said:

Guess we'll be running our existing version of CS at the office for a long time.

Also, think this will result in an increase in piracy. Only way to get a full copy of CS will be to pirate an older version.

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Yup. I sense CS6 getting a huge amount of traffic on the less-than-legal channels for individual users...and maybe official licensing by companies as well. Those resisting the upgrade bug are going to panic now.

Leasing CS or any professional tool that doesn't require big-time support is fcking retarded.

Adobe thinks that everyone using CS is just going to drop $50 a month and there will be endless profits coming in. It's not going to happen, people are not ready to just move to subscription models for everything.

I don't do a lot of photo editing myself, so the free version of CS2 is fine for me.

Thank god I purchased their last Master Suite Collection. The fact that it looked like they were going to Cloud was exactly the reason I went for the full suite. I want to make sure that if I fall on financially tough times, I still have access to Photoshop, Premiere, etc.

The sales rep was trying to say how much cheaper Cloud was. Yeah, it's cheaper if I'm one of those people who upgrades every cycle. But I honestly don't care about the small upgrades they have from the X to X.5 versions. I wait for major improvements before upgrading.

I sure hope they have some kind of contingency in place for when, not if, their cloud services take a shit.

SomeoneElse said:

For bigger companies and firms this might makes sense but anyone that uses their products at home, this is a worthless money pit. They just want to suck all the money they can out of you and give you the minimal amount of work in developing new and better software.

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How does it make sense...

More bandwidth

Your creative work hosted outside your office on someone else's cloud..

There goes schools, government branches and many companies, they wont be using the services...

What if i am on a flight and want to do some work?

How about how do i browse my 100Gig of RAW files?

There has to be files installed locally, but will this be like always on DRM where you have to be connected and signed in,

How do student copies work?
How do "starving artist" people afford it long term.?
This seems a weird DRM scheme that's going to make moar people pirate stuff...

Do these idiots expect companies to put their sensitive work up in the cloud where someone can access it easier?

I hope this crushes their bottom line dearly. Since Adobe does Flash and Flash is a steaming pile I do not wish them any luck at all.

Well guess im sticking with Photoshop CS6 for a long time, i hope this new model severely crash and burns and they say to themselves oh crap we screwed up and now we need to fix this.

"Subscription based service" is code word for "Always on DRM".

The other advantage for them of course is that people are finding more and more than even old software does everything they need just fine.

My parents for example would still be completely fine if their computers with running Windows XP if I didn't force them to upgrade to Windows 7. If Windows were subscription based, Microsoft could likely cut down on a lot of piracy and milk my parents year after year after year, instead of just the one time cheap license fee.

dogbyte_13 said:

and they say to themselves oh crap we screwed up and now we need to fix this.

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You mean like Microsoft and Windows 8

niconx said:

Always online?

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Nope. All of the software is downloaded toy our PC, and there's a one time license check per month.
If your license check fails due to whatever reason, you can still use the software for a few days until you can run the check again.

Great for businesses, shite for users.

DeathPrincess said:

How do student copies work?
How do "starving artist" people afford it long term.?
This seems a weird DRM scheme that's going to make moar people pirate stuff...

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The student subscription is $20/month, and to me that is very much worth it considering how much you get for that.

Anyone remember pagemaker? How about Quark? How about inDesign... Oh wait, that last one hasn't happened yet...

Jaymzkerten said:

The student subscription is $20/month, and to me that is very much worth it considering how much you get for that.

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So its gone from around $300 (for lifetime usage) to $720 minimum for a typical university course? That's going to go down well.

I like the way people think they are beating the system, adobe has always forced upgrades with OS updates and other incompatibilities. The full legal price of CS was always high, if you cant afford $50 / month then you were not getting it legally anyway. Any of the cheaper ways of running CS will surely still be available, such as student subscriptions.

What we probably have here is a bunch of prosumers who got a free older copy from a friend or new someone in college to snag a copy from.

Personally I think the price / month / year of many of these subscription services is a little high but I believe as more people are assimilated they will be able to lower the price a little to branch out to more clients and make more money. And I think that's a very good thing. Anyone who has seen what f2p has done to the game industry knows that this stupid idea that you can get something for free or super cheap doesn't work in the end.

Looks like I wont be upgrading my CS5 anytime soon and by anytime soon, I mean ever.

DeathPrincess said:

So its gone from around $300 (for lifetime usage) to $720 minimum for a typical university course? That's going to go down well.

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Don't talk sense.

rudy said:

I like the way people think they are beating the system, adobe has always forced upgrades with OS updates and other incompatibilities. The full legal price of CS was always high, if you cant afford $50 / month then you were not getting it legally anyway. Any of the cheaper ways of running CS will surely still be available, such as student subscriptions.

What we probably have here is a bunch of prosumers who got a free older copy from a friend or new someone in college to snag a copy from.

Personally I think the price / month / year of many of these subscription services is a little high but I believe as more people are assimilated they will be able to lower the price a little to branch out to more clients and make more money. And I think that's a very good thing. Anyone who has seen what f2p has done to the game industry knows that this stupid idea that you can get something for free or super cheap doesn't work in the end.

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Yea, because prices on subscriptions to anything always go down and not up.

The funny part ? US price for "Complete Individual" plan is US $49.99, and in EU it is €61.49 per month.

US $49.99 is €37.95, add a 20% VAT on top of it and it is €45.53.

Dear Adobe, i have only three letters for you - WTF ? Where does that extra 16€ come from ?

DeathPrincess said:

So its gone from around $300 (for lifetime usage) to $720 minimum for a typical university course? That's going to go down well.

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$300? For one program right?

The $20/mo gets your the ENTIRE CS plus additional apps exclusive to the sub plan.
Probably $3000+ in software.
They do individual sub apps but those need to be more affordable. Shame on them for that.

This sucks for casual users and hobbyist, but boy did they open the flood gates for businesses.

Oh Adobe. I'm still not over your love for Australia already.

http://www.neowin.net/news/its-cheaper-to-fly-to-the-usa-than-buy-adobe-cs6-in-australia

In Australia, Adobe's Creative Suite 6 Master Collection costs AU$4,344 for a boxed copy, or AU$3,949 for a digital copy which is GST exempt. In the United States, the exact same product will cost you US$2,599, which when currency converted comes in at AU$2,513 - a difference in price of AU$1,831 over the boxed copy (AU$1,436 over digital).

A return flight to Los Angeles costs AU$1,147.58 on Virgin Australia, meaning if you chose to fly to the United States to purchase CS6 Master Collection you would save AU$228 over buying a digital copy locally, and it's a whole AU$684 cheaper than buying a boxed copy. If you are unlucky and forced to pay import tax and duty for the product coming into Australia, the total amount (CS6 + tax/duty + flight) would be AU$4,049, which is still cheaper than buying a boxed copy locally.

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rudy said:

I like the way people think they are beating the system, adobe has always forced upgrades with OS updates and other incompatibilities. The full legal price of CS was always high, if you cant afford $50 / month then you were not getting it legally anyway. Any of the cheaper ways of running CS will surely still be available, such as student subscriptions.

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What about if you were a high level amateur photographer/painter/whatever, so weren't making an income from your work? As you weren't getting a steady income from it, would it be worth it to be taxed $50 every month rather than a one off fee that's good forever?

WorldExclusive said:

$300? For one program right?

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No for the entire suite with the student discount. They've just more than doubled the cost for students to use their programs (more on a 4/6/10 year course [including high school])

WorldExclusive said:

$300? For one program right?

The $20/mo gets your the ENTIRE CS plus additional apps exclusive to the sub plan.
Probably $3000+ in software.
They do individual sub apps but those need to be more affordable. Shame on them for that.

This sucks for casual users and hobbyist, but boy did they open the flood gates for businesses.

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Yea...because businesses were totally paying individual retail pricing before and didn't have volume agreements.

DeathPrincess said:

No for the entire suite with the student discount. They've just more than doubled the cost for students to use their programs (more on a 4/6/10 year course [including high school])

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No, the suites are different. The equivalent suite being offered here is the full "Master" suite
and is currently >$900 with the academic discount. It is "Design Standard" that you get for $300 (I'd have to look, but I think it's actually closer to $370). That's a big difference.

Now, you can argue you don't need the extra tools in the Master Suite ...

The first mention of cloud and all forms of reason seem to disappear. The very idea of operating an editor remotely is just silly. Latency, file size, the use of third-party software - VSTs, codecs, etc. Its ludicrous and a display of ignorance to even entertain the thought.

Everyone wants to hate so bad they fail at even knowing the pricing difference. Since when could someone get After Effects, Audition, Premiere Pro, and Photoshop for $300 with an academic discount? Pile of BS being shoveled in this thread. CC is a boon to anyone needing this software. Even if all they need is Photoshop they can sub to it for $10 a month. That's $120 a year. What did it cost before? It was $500 or some crap as I recall.

People here are ridiculous. Know something before you open mouth ffs.

DeathPrincess said:

What about if you were a high level amateur photographer/painter/whatever, so weren't making an income from your work? As you weren't getting a steady income from it, would it be worth it to be taxed $50 every month rather than a one off fee that's good forever?

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No it wouldn't that would put you in the boat I am in, I run a website and do other stuff for work but don't make a living on the photos or edit enough of them to justify more then say $100 / year. I don't use PS or illustrator.. See that wasn't so hard was it? I know that's such novel concept to Americans that you have to make a compromise based on cost.

I pay $40 for Paint shop pro and do everything I need and like it.

When adobe sees people who were abusing the system before jump ship to a competitor they will offer a different price plan.. Competition works if you let it work. If you try to find a loop hole and keep using the over priced product that product never adjusts properly. The people who pay legitimately just end up paying more then their fair share. If most people only want to pay for CS once every 6 years then the price will reflect that, it will be insanely high which it is already. And your best customers who upgrade every 2 years will be punished. Subscription services are good because they let a company know how its customers really feel and allow them to adjust and play with the model until they get it right.

This is perfect for small shops or consultants that may only need it for short term projects, but I can see why larger shops are probably not fans of this idea.

You don’t have to like this model, but it is quite amusing watching people get all worked up over it without bothering to look at the details. Someone says “cloud” and everyone makes all the wrong assumptions …

All the applications still install and run locally and any use of the cloud-features and storage is entirely optional. Your bandwidth charges don’t go up, there’s no change in the performance of the applications and you don’t to have your files stored anywhere differently from where you do it now (in fact it defaults to local storage).

License validation is pretty unobtrusive. Applications validate on launch, and you have 37 days from their last successful validation before you have to be connected again. On the annual plan (still paid monthly but with an annual commitment), that extends to 99 days (and will move out to 180 days shortly). So unless you’re travelling in the boonies for a month plus at a time, an internet outage isn’t likely to be a problem.

There are lower priced options for users that only want Photoshop, which while more expensive than upgrading every cycle are a much lower barrier to entry for new users ($20 to get started vs. $600+) and include features not available in CS6.

There is still a discounted student subscription.

“Starving artists” may have to switch some priorities, stick with CS6, or use different tools (the impact to Adobe will be, for practical purposes, nil).

Photographer’s that don’t genuinely need Photoshop (which in my experience is most of them, if they’re being realistic about what they’re doing – a lot of that is vanity) will still be able to buy LightRoom as a perpetual license, and the price of that was significantly reduced recently.

This really isn’t likely to phase businesses at all, which has to be the bulk of the customer base. Taking it as a tax deductible recurring expense is going to be a lot more appealing than dealing with it as a capital expenditure and having to depreciate it over several years. It also adds a lot more flexibility with licensing for new and seasonal/temporary employees, without taking away the possibility for customers to negotiate discounts on volume subscriptions.

If you use several of the applications, or need them on Windows and OS X, this works out to be usefully less expensive than the non-subscription model, even as a hobbyist.

As individual users or hobbyists, who weren’t upgrading regularly, it’ll be a more expensive. You’re also getting more. If you don’t like that, you can, of course, vote with your wallet.

The notion of a “one off fee that’s good forever” still exists right now. You can buy CS6 the old way still, or stick with what you have. And if you’re going to stick with it forever, you won’t care that you don’t get to upgrade it anyway.

…

I’d wager Adobe have a better idea about how many of their licensed users upgrade, how often, how those costs average out and how many existing customers have already opted for their subscription offerings. It’s not at all uncommon for businesses to “fire” some classes of customer either; if I can raise my net income by a consistent 10% by giving up the least profitable 20% of my customer base, I’d do it (in fact I have, in more than one endeavor).

This is just the first shift of many. Even if it fails this time round, and Adobe have to revert to offering perpetual licenses (which I doubt will happen), it’ll keep getting tried. And I promise you the next round will simply make the perpetual license definitively more expensive than the subscription approach.

One word: Delivery. Adobe better be prepared to deliver uninterrupted service 24/7/365 without a single issue or hiccup. I predict nothing but problems.

Methadras said:

One word: Delivery. Adobe better be prepared to deliver uninterrupted service 24/7/365 without a single issue or hiccup. I predict nothing but problems.

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It isn't "Always Online" as far as I understand.
Cloud is poor wording. Seems just like a subscription and nothing more.