What is happening to Native Instruments?

[v1o]

Last I heard they were restructuring and focusing more on their core products. Kontakt got an upgrade last time round and Massive X is getting quite regular updates. Maschine is getting major new features soon. I doubt there will ever be an upgrade to Absynth apart from maintenance fixes. The rest of the business seems focuses on selling content packs and services.

[Examigan]

I like FM8 but it could use a resizable display of course and any other updates would be a bonus.

f.'em by Tracktion hopefully will released at some point (not sure when exactly), so I may not have to squint at the FM8 display and just use f.'em and Arturia's DX7 V instead.

[RexBanner]

Last I heard they were restructuring and focusing more on their core products. Kontakt got an upgrade last time round and Massive X is getting quite regular updates. Maschine is getting major new features soon. I doubt there will ever be an upgrade to Absynth apart from maintenance fixes. The rest of the business seems focuses on selling content packs and services.

Just like with video games, DLC is more profitable.

[glokraw]

A number of people by 4k/5k monitors, some of them giant size,
then when they can't see a plugin anymore,
they act like they are too poor to afford
an old used monitor that's appropriate for the gui's they
rant about.

You can always re-purpose a giant monitor as a coffee table,
but then some would complain because they bought the curvy one,
and the mug slides around too much,
or the beer in the stein always looks crooked

[claudedefaren]

...

[Stefken]

I am Native Instruments customer for long time, but for the last 1-2 years I see not to many products/serious updates released by Native Instruments. Last big product is actually Massive X only, rest are trillion of expansions. This is more like tiny 1-2 person working team not like a big player in this industry. Moreover older products haven't got any updates (like FM8, Absynth, Battery). Is this company winding up?

This has been going on for quite a while now. There is hardly any innovation going on in NI.
They have mostly become a content provider, using their main tools that they have been using for a long time now (Kontakt & Reaktor). So it's like : same old, same old.
Absynth wasn't even their product; they bought it. They wouldn't know how to update it.
MX was a big development project but we saw how well that went. Nice sound, but from a project management point of view, a bad project that was released in an incomplete state, after being postponed twice.

Face it: don't expect many innovations from NI at this point. They will just carry on producing expansion after expansion...

[Rockatansky]

A number of people by 4k/5k monitors, some of them giant size,
then when they can't see a plugin anymore,

I have a 48" screen at 4K resolution, the on-screen size is exactly the same as it would be on a regular Full HD 24" screen. Absolutely identical. Because 1px is stll 1px. The problem causers are the small screens with 4K resolution, where four pixels get crammed into the same physical space as a single pixel on a regular full HD screen. 'Retina style'. Because 1px now becomes 1/4 px and everything is displayed at 25% of its size on a 'regular' screen.

[rezoneight]

In the last year, they released 2 synths and a effect plugin. That's a lot more than in the time before that, and a lot more than any other company I could think of released in that time.

Super 8/MX/Raum? Don't forget Straylight.

Super 8 of course is a Reaktor thing but it sounds good.

[rezoneight]

Do you think Reveal Sound is going under as well? They have one product, Spire, that hasn't been updated much either but they certainly sell a lot of expansions for it.

And how many employees have Reveal Sound?

I don't know how many employees Reveal Sound has but it's irrelevant because the concepts are the same. You have finite resources and you use those resources (hopefully) where the most money will be made. In the case of Spire it already sounds great. What else do they need to do with it? Better to spend the time doing add-ons and they've done some great ones.

[lwj]

I suppose they’re plugging away at that ‘One Native’ thing they were talking about. They went through a big restructuring so it’s normal they keep quiet for a while.

I still think they’re trying to become a content provider though. Sounds subscription, samples delivered straight into your DAW, the first MIDI interface for creditcards. I guess that’s where they see the money. I think it’s a dead end.

[v1o]

A number of people by 4k/5k monitors, some of them giant size,
then when they can't see a plugin anymore,
they act like they are too poor to afford
an old used monitor that's appropriate for the gui's they
rant about.

You can always re-purpose a giant monitor as a coffee table,
but then some would complain because they bought the curvy one,
and the mug slides around too much,
or the beer in the stein always looks crooked

Or rather just stick with your old 1080p monitor. Nothing wrong with 1080p.

This is silly. Television show producers didn't refuse to adapt to new HDTV screen sizes.

It's all extra profit for them. They make you pay extra to get 4K pictures, whether its streaming services or cable subscriptions. Even movie studios want you to buy new 4K versions of old movies that you already own. I don't think NI can realistically charge you for 4K/5K GUIs.

[Jace-BeOS]

I love how people who don’t care about sharp text and photography will diss high-PPI displays because they see it as a way for people to “whine about perfectly acceptable GUIs” on music software.

No, actually I don’t love it.

As an artist and musician, I need my computers to do BOTH better. High-PPI is a good thing for text readability and for photography work. It’s not some kind of pointless “what can they sell me now” waste of money. Just because some of you people don’t need more than 1080 rows of pixels doesn’t mean we are all comfortable with the same.

I’ve been spoiled by sharp text on retina displays since iPhone 4. It was a long time coming, but it arrived. It took a while longer for laptops & desktops to get it, and now it’s taking forever for the rest of the software world to catch up.

[Examigan]

A number of people by 4k/5k monitors, some of them giant size,
then when they can't see a plugin anymore,
they act like they are too poor to afford
an old used monitor that's appropriate for the gui's they
rant about.

You can always re-purpose a giant monitor as a coffee table,
but then some would complain because they bought the curvy one,
and the mug slides around too much,
or the beer in the stein always looks crooked

Or rather just stick with your old 1080p monitor. Nothing wrong with 1080p.

Except some older plugins are not looking that great now, even on my 1080p monitor. One company that made the jump to re-sizing displays recently was Korg with the Legacy Collection.

My eyes aren't quite what they used to be. I wish Minimonsta had a re-sizable display and a few others, such as FM8 and Battery 3, and the AIR plugins.

Here's FM8 on my display:

FM8.jpg

[Vertion]

Native Instruments will be OK, we just needed it to be clear we wish to continue to use what we purchase. Even if it's an old tool seldom used, it should remain trusty and available.

What more ground is there for NI to cover? I suppose they can continue towards mastery and perfection of their existing products, but a shared view of perfection is often difficult to come by. For most of us, we want a singlular wish button, to grant us a perfectly unique song with a single button, generating exactly what we were looking for, even if we didn't know. For others, being part of the process is more important, exploring and funding gems, or the shear feeling of mastering our technique.

If NI looks at these factors, along with the usual user experience aspects, I'm sure they can find many more new unique products to sell, that are exactly what most of us are looking for.

Cheers to Native Instruments.

[Stefken]

Halle f**king lujah.

The only problem is NI hasn't done any decent updates of their tools for years. Let alone they be the masters of creaton.