Of course not. That wouuld like expecting GM to decide there's more money in parts and closing all their assempbly lines. It would require a fundamental shift in their business, throwing away what they would see as the biggest part of their expertise to concentrate on something that they probably see as the arse-end of what they do.emdot_ambient wrote:You really think that if someone like Roland could make as much profit off software as they do off hardware that they wouldn't close their factories, fire most of their manufacturing labor, cut their costs and go 100% software?.
You don't think Alesis could sell a software-only Ion for the same price as the Micron? They would probably only need to sell tiny fraction as many to be equally profitable but I'm sure they think of themselves as a manufacturing company, even though all that happens off-shore.But I don't think they'll abandon their hardware lines because I don't think the software market is anywhere nearly lucrative enough for them to justify it.
No that assumes that the $50k you need to make a year covers all that, surely? I think I could make a fine tax-free living off interent sales of US$50k a year.emdot_ambient wrote:That also assumes $0 in software development cost, $0 spent on developing a GUI, $0 money spent on creating and maintaining a company web site, $0 cost on support for the product after sale, $0 spent in legal fees and other business expenses, $0 spent taking orders and delivering product, $0 spent on advertising, $0 on time spent creating a user manual . . .woolyloach wrote:Let's say you need to make $50,000 a year. That makes you have to sell around 334 copies at $150 each to make your required annual income!
My problem with the situation is that it drives dev's to make ever more complex instruemnts which I just don't want. No-one is selling the kinds of instruments I would really be interested in any more, they are all freebies and very hit-and-miss.eduardo_b wrote:I think the escalating prices for new synths (I mean in relation to previous pricing tiers) is leaving more and more people unable to buy them,
That is certainly my situation. I just se that if someone is willing to do really good work and give the results away for free or for a very small price, why should i give my money to another developer who seems to be comparatively greedy? And my host probably has an undue influence on that decision too - if it costs $300 and provides dozens of high quality tools why would I pay half that amount for something that is just a synth? It doesn't make sense and I cannot divorce one thing from the other and say that it is good value in absolute terms.Even if someone can afford a synth, they may or may not feel they are getting enough to justify the cost. I know plenty of people with very good incomes who are conservative about this sort of thing, wanting to feel they paid a fair price for what they bought. Not sure how fair is defined, which is the psychological component I noted earlier.
. I wasn't into soft synths at the time, but I remember reading Keyboard's spiel on the European synth industry back in '98 or '99- both Generator and Reaktor were out at the time. Generator had a DSP card, while Reaktor was native. x_bruce also remembers Generator running on a DSP card; that was his intro to NI products.
.