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Change of Leadership at NI - Full Version of Kontakt required?


Sander Verstraten

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1 hour ago, Fleer said:

You’re right. Don’t know if Kontakt sales are as frequent, though. 

I do recall one last year, but I deferred on that deal...

I have a Kontakt Player library that qualifies me for the Kontakt crossgrade price, but it would be nice to get that at 50% off, as was offered to me last time. This year's Summer of Sound doesn't seem to be the same. But they are teasing me with Komplete. 🙄

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7 hours ago, Freyja Grimaude-Valens said:

Now that's just quitter talk. I have been seeing more and more developers creating their own bespoke engines, and move to engines like UVI Workstation/Falcon. And keep in mind, the restriction to use 3rd party libraries with the free Workstation isn't as rough as with Kontakt Player and the whole demo thing.

And you know, sometimes, you don't really need the massive glut of features that Kontakt offers, and it would be better to use something simpler.

It's not "quitter talk", it's reality. Very few companies have moved to UVI; Virharmonic being the the most popular, Acousticsamples and VILabs. Most of the other companies have put out a single product that uses them.

Developing your own engine isn't something a whole lot of companies are willing to do. It takes time, lots of money, testing, more money, bug fixing before release, money. You get the point. On top of that, once released it can run into the same issues as companies like EastWest or Spitfire Audio have faced and take many years before they have a solid product (Play wasn't what I'd call a "good engine" till version 4). It can turn into a sinkhole for a lot of companies which is why they use engines put out by other companies. They are more able to focus on the sampling aspect which is what was intended from the start. 

The whole discussion about that is kind of off the original statement you made though because more people are willing to throw $130 at Kontakt during sales season than you think. It's been a sales model that has worked for them for quite some time now.

Edited by Batwaffel
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5 hours ago, abacab said:

Just asking for a friend, when do you think the next 50% off deal on Kontakt 6 will happen?

November sale is their single instrument sale. The summer sale has been a bundle sale for a long while but they started including crossgrades and upgrades in it as well a couple years ago. So the next time to pick it up for $130ish will be late November. Just make sure you have a Kontakt library registered on your Native Access account that is crossgrade compatible such as Embertone Arcane or any of the paid Kontakt Player compatible libraries.

Edited by Batwaffel
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I like sales or I wouldn't be here ;)..well ok, Truth be told I would still pop in to read the comments .Coming to the deals forum is about as much of a habit as putting pants on in the morning. Yes I'm pretty consistent about that ( believe it or not).

Native Instruments likely isn't going anywhere. I do see them loosing more and more market share. Who would have imagined the world we now live in 1 year ago? Anything is possible. Not likely.

 For old timers, remember Sears and Pennys? They were once THE deal for shoppers. Now you can't find them. Look at all of the activity in the last 10 years in the DAW /plugins world. As more and more makers adopt either their own instrument platforms which contrary to some views isn't next to impossible and it isn't financially unfeasible.  See exhibit A.-Have you seen anyone who adopted their own platform ever say anything like, " Wow, we were big dummies. Should not have left our Kontakt sugar daddy".  No- they don't. Why? They are making more money AND it feels good to be free from Kontakt tyranny ;)

Yes, I'll keep Kontakt, and UVI, and Sampletank and ENGINE....and whatever else works and has the libs I like.

 

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On 8/14/2020 at 9:16 AM, telecode 101 said:

You can't really predict much from corporate mumbo jumbo.  There was a rumble that NI may build upon Maschine to make it DAW like and am I def sure they have a new Guitar Rig in the project map.  I was part of beta survey. Not sure about other stuff.

What might be in K13?

- noire

- straylight

- modular icons and or some of their lame play series.

not really enough to entire upgrade IMO.

the rest of the stuff is just too new. but who knows. anything is possible.

 

 

 

 

NI always includes EVERYTHING that was released before a new version of Komplete Ultimate comes out.  It doesn't matter if  one of their libraries came out a few  weeks before.  A lot of KU12 came out the summer before.*

So I believe you can count on the following being in KU13

Mallet Flux

Noire

Session Guitarist: Picked Acoustic

Session Guitarist: Electric Sunburst Deluxe

Straylight

Super 8

Mysteria

Pharlight

Play Series: Modular Icons, Lo-Fi Glow, Cloud Supply

Arkhis

20 more Maschine expansions

The only question I have is about  Stradivari Violin  because it is only one part of a trio which may not come out for awhile.    But it was released, so I expect it will be to be there.

In addition, NI sometimes releases a product at the same time as they release a new version of Komplete.  For example, Massive X in Komplete 12, which wasn't ready, but did come included.   And with KU11, they had the Symphony Essentials series.  (The full symphony series was extra and later turned up in their CE.)  I frankly am surprised that they haven't released an effects pack to expand on Raum and they haven't yet released a Discovery library, the first time in many years.

I expect the announcement about KU13 will come no later than September and the product will be out by October.

KU11 was announce in August.

KU13 will be 50% off in the summer of 2021

*I think what you may be confusing is that NI doesn't put new products on sale right away.

Edited by Reid Rosefelt
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I suspect this is about the 59 million that NI took from the "Private Equity" company EMH.

I doubt that EMH  put any of their own money in, they just borrowed it.  In the deal, they paid themselves millions out of what they borrowed.   And some people at NI got rich too.  So now they have to pay for the fees everybody got for the deal, and now they have interest payments.  Now they are deep, deep  in the hole for the money they borrowed. You were doing fine with your business but now you have to pay all that  back.   These companies usually strip the companies down to the bone in order to make them more "profitable".

I think there are a few examples where Private Equity deals worked out t to the advantage of the companies because they used the infusion of capital to their advantage.  But there are much more examples of where the companies closed.

So....the first thing happened at NI  was the big bloodbath of firings.  A company is more profitable if you cut costs.

And maybe these NI guys aren't enjoying what's going on, so they are leaving. 

I don't think subscription is happening for this go-round of Komplete and I don't think anybody who paid for it will ever lose ownership.  But at some point there may be a Composer Cloud type thing where you can play monthly and have access to everything the day it comes out. 

I'm not very worried.  The worst case scenario in my mind is that these assholes will kill the old NI but it will be resurrected.  Like Cakewalk.

 

Edited by Reid Rosefelt
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17 hours ago, Batwaffel said:

Just make sure you have a Kontakt library registered on your Native Access account that is crossgrade compatible such as Embertone Arcane or any of the paid Kontakt Player compatible libraries.

Yes, all set in that regard. And waiting for November ... 😉

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On 8/19/2020 at 1:45 PM, Batwaffel said:

It's not "quitter talk", it's reality. Very few companies have moved to UVI; Virharmonic being the the most popular, Acousticsamples and VILabs. Most of the other companies have put out a single product that uses them.

Developing your own engine isn't something a whole lot of companies are willing to do. It takes time, lots of money, testing, more money, bug fixing before release, money. You get the point. On top of that, once released it can run into the same issues as companies like EastWest or Spitfire Audio have faced and take many years before they have a solid product (Play wasn't what I'd call a "good engine" till version 4). It can turn into a sinkhole for a lot of companies which is why they use engines put out by other companies. They are more able to focus on the sampling aspect which is what was intended from the start. 

The whole discussion about that is kind of off the original statement you made though because more people are willing to throw $130 at Kontakt during sales season than you think. It's been a sales model that has worked for them for quite some time now.

Look, you can save the excuses. The fact is, we're in a global pandemic, less people are able to afford things. Sure, people can throw in $130 during the summer sales, but if people have been using free libraries to get to that during the summer instead of having to pay $199, and that is suddenly taken away because they "need money" that is not a good look, and it is one that erodes consumer trust.

That was my point.

For the record, I already own the full version of Kontakt. This isn't about me, don't deign to make it about me.

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2 hours ago, Freyja Grimaude-Valens said:

Look, you can save the excuses. The fact is, we're in a global pandemic, less people are able to afford things. Sure, people can throw in $130 during the summer sales, but if people have been using free libraries to get to that during the summer instead of having to pay $199, and that is suddenly taken away because they "need money" that is not a good look, and it is one that erodes consumer trust.

That was my point.

For the record, I already own the full version of Kontakt. This isn't about me, don't deign to make it about me.

You may want to check your facts there. People aren't really spending less money. At least those who are buying plugins aren't spending less overall. Whether that changes, no one can say for sure. Most people are back to work for the moment.

What you're basically saying is that you believe it should be free or cheaper because a couple other companies have free players or put out cheaper products so your personal opinion is that it is the way the world is going so a company with no real competition at all should change their highly successful business model because people won't be willing to dump all that money into them that they've been dumping in for much longer even though their sales of Komplete are really strong and buying Kontakt offers them a cheaper way to get to the ultimate (no pun intended) goal of having it much cheaper.

Yah, okay there. :P

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2 hours ago, Freyja Grimaude-Valens said:

The fact is, we're in a global pandemic, less people are able to afford things.......

C'mon........what we're talking about here are essentially toys. If a few people can't afford new toys for a while, it's hardly the end of the world. Might even be a good thing in the long run. If more than a few people stop buying the toys then the toy sellers will have to adjust their prices accordingly as demand (or lack of) always wins. Personally. I'm a little sick of hearing the....."I'm a poor (insert person type of choice) and because of Covid, I can't really afford the full price of (insert non-essential item of choice) so I should be able to get it cheaper. This seeming perception that everyone is entitled to have everything at a price that they can afford is ridiculous. Almost everyone apart from ppe/sign printers and perspex screen installers is being adversely affected in some way by this (insert description of choice) so a few muso types who have to make do for a while with their sub-standard sample libraries isn't really worth even thinking about.

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4 hours ago, Batwaffel said:

You may want to check your facts there. People aren't really spending less money. At least those who are buying plugins aren't spending less overall. Whether that changes, no one can say for sure. Most people are back to work for the moment.

What you're basically saying is that you believe it should be free or cheaper because a couple other companies have free players or put out cheaper products so your personal opinion is that it is the way the world is going so a company with no real competition at all should change their highly successful business model because people won't be willing to dump all that money into them that they've been dumping in for much longer even though their sales of Komplete are really strong and buying Kontakt offers them a cheaper way to get to the ultimate (no pun intended) goal of having it much cheaper.

Yah, okay there. :P

Yeah you're still leaving a lot of details out there, and since we've been at this for a while it's safe to assume bad faith here. You can keep believing that a company that is doing its layoff cycle, and a change of ownership, while making anti-consumer decisions for the sake of gaining more money, because they needed it is doing well. I am going to continue helping my colleagues get better deals for what they need.

I mean what is it, are they doing well enough that they do not need to change their model, or are they doing so poorly that they are resorting to pulling anti-consumer moves in order to squeeze more money out of prospective customers BeCaUsE dEvElOpMeNt Is ExPeNsIvE?

4 hours ago, paulo said:

C'mon........what we're talking about here are essentially toys. If a few people can't afford new toys for a while, it's hardly the end of the world. Might even be a good thing in the long run. If more than a few people stop buying the toys then the toy sellers will have to adjust their prices accordingly as demand (or lack of) always wins. Personally. I'm a little sick of hearing the....."I'm a poor (insert person type of choice) and because of Covid, I can't really afford the full price of (insert non-essential item of choice) so I should be able to get it cheaper. This seeming perception that everyone is entitled to have everything at a price that they can afford is ridiculous. Almost everyone apart from ppe/sign printers and perspex screen installers is being adversely affected in some way by this (insert description of choice) so a few muso types who have to make do for a while with their sub-standard sample libraries isn't really worth even thinking about.

And companies aren't entitled to more money out of a prospective customer's wallet than what the market can bear. If hearing the complaints of poor folk gets under your skin that much, then chances are, you're well off enough that worrying about making ends meet is something you'll never have to think about. You'll get over it in time.

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5 hours ago, Freyja Grimaude-Valens said:

Yeah you're still leaving a lot of details out there, and since we've been at this for a while it's safe to assume bad faith here. You can keep believing that a company that is doing its layoff cycle, and a change of ownership, while making anti-consumer decisions for the sake of gaining more money, because they needed it is doing well. I am going to continue helping my colleagues get better deals for what they need.

I mean what is it, are they doing well enough that they do not need to change their model, or are they doing so poorly that they are resorting to pulling anti-consumer moves in order to squeeze more money out of prospective customers BeCaUsE dEvElOpMeNt Is ExPeNsIvE?

Well you have fun with that. :P

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7 hours ago, Freyja Grimaude-Valens said:

companies aren't entitled to more money out of a prospective customer's wallet than what the market can bear. If hearing the complaints of poor folk gets under your skin that much, then chances are, you're well off enough that worrying about making ends meet is something you'll never have to think about. You'll get over it in time.

There is no compulsion to buy anything that NI sell. Nobody really  "needs" it and if the asking price becomes too much for the current marketplace at any given time they will either have to act accordingly or get used to not selling anything. In this sense, consumers already have all the power if only they would collectively use it. I thought you were smart enough to know full well that I am not talking here about people who are having difficulties making ends meet. This is a software forum and as such the discussion is about very non-essential items, but since you bring up the subject of those who are barely getting by then I would think that the cost of having some sample libraries isn't even close to being one of the things that keep them awake at night. Is anyone really thinking........hmmm, what to do, what to do...........I really like the look of Komplete Ultimate, but I can't afford to get that AND feed the kids.................what should I do,? It's all so confusing.

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