What is happening to Native Instruments?

[benjamind]

NI aren't disappearing any time soon. Too much is based on their product line, especially Koktakt which so many libraries use as their sampler engine.

No way they are winding down...unless there is something I am not aware of (and would rather not be, to be honest). Hopefully it all goes well.

Yes the economy is f**king shit right now and fears are totally understandable.

[rezoneight]

huh? didn't NI release a whole bunch of stuff in 2019/2020? new interface, noire, synths and some other stuff?

Yeah I forgot about Noire. Really think of it just as a sampled piano but they do have the other stuff that it does. Mysteria is definitely a niche thing, even more so than Straylight but you're correct. Again, I'm pretty happy with the direction NI is going. Now I just want them to have the summer sale so I can upgrade to Komplete Ultimate at a reasonable price.

[trusampler]

a couple of months ago there's a rumor that NI is also working on a daw of some sorts/new maschine upgrade?
They are still the leader in their field. I think most of their projects are mature, so I wouldn't be surprised if a daw like product shows up in the next year or so. Which will obviously take the industry by storm such as maschine did.

[4damind]

Well, the economic situation is generally difficult and certainly not only since Corona. Probably many will postpone their purchases of plugins and hardware.
Maybe that NI does not have the confidence of the users as an innovative company anymore. They are just slow and users have the feeling that products are not being developed further.

For example, Massive X... this was not the idea of NI, but was developed by Maik Daliot and later transferred to NI to be fully developed and made public. But NI itself should have had the idea to develop a new version of Massive years ago (the same with Absynth).
It's a big company that unfortunately has become very inflexible.
We'll see where the journey goes

[glokraw]

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

Here's FM8 on a Goodwill priced 17" monitor, with Hive2 behind it at 90% My eyes appreciate scaling. I use multiple desktop screens in many cases, but I wouldn't mind having the screens Bitwig drag along to trade shows. I'd still keep the 17-incher, even if just for Reaktor user-lib content. Maybe only Evil Dragon knows if the FM8 coder/team and other oldtime employees are even still on the NI payroll. If not, updating such old products might become more costly. Maybe NI could rent the Korg coders who made M1 and others much more enjoyable. Air's AIEP3 would also be very nice for us with well-travelled eyes :hyper: Cheers

[telecode]

Well, the economic situation is generally difficult and certainly not only since Corona. Probably many will postpone their purchases of plugins and hardware.
Maybe that NI does not have the confidence of the users as an innovative company anymore. They are just slow and users have the feeling that products are not being developed further.

For example, Massive X... this was not the idea of NI, but was developed by Maik Daliot and later transferred to NI to be fully developed and made public. But NI itself should have had the idea to develop a new version of Massive years ago (the same with Absynth).
It's a big company that unfortunately has become very inflexible.
We'll see where the journey goes

Yes. Agree with this. It will be interesting to see how the fall out from epidemic will affect some of the entrepreneurial music software companies. NI were already going through some sort of major reorg before the economies were put into shutdown mode. We shall see.

[mladi]

Well, the economic situation is generally difficult and certainly not only since Corona. Probably many will postpone their purchases of plugins and hardware.
Maybe that NI does not have the confidence of the users as an innovative company anymore. They are just slow and users have the feeling that products are not being developed further.

For example, Massive X... this was not the idea of NI, but was developed by Maik Daliot and later transferred to NI to be fully developed and made public. But NI itself should have had the idea to develop a new version of Massive years ago (the same with Absynth).
It's a big company that unfortunately has become very inflexible.
We'll see where the journey goes

I once called the support in Berlin (NI Headquarter) by telephone because i couldn't log in to my account a few days but it became urgent (i'm from Germany too). The NI guy who talked to me was very friendly but could barely speak german. Really very bad understanding and he had to deal the support via telephone in german language. I was like: Whaaat???? What's going on here??? Did i dial a german number to reach Honolulu??? Seriously for such a big company that's somehow poor.

[telecode]

Well, the economic situation is generally difficult and certainly not only since Corona. Probably many will postpone their purchases of plugins and hardware.
Maybe that NI does not have the confidence of the users as an innovative company anymore. They are just slow and users have the feeling that products are not being developed further.

For example, Massive X... this was not the idea of NI, but was developed by Maik Daliot and later transferred to NI to be fully developed and made public. But NI itself should have had the idea to develop a new version of Massive years ago (the same with Absynth).
It's a big company that unfortunately has become very inflexible.
We'll see where the journey goes

I once called the support in Berlin (NI Headquarter) by telephone because i couldn't log in to my account a few days but it became urgent (i'm from Germany too). The NI guy who talked to me was very friendly but could barely speek german. Really very bad understanding and he had to deal the support via telephone in german language. I was like: Whaaat???? What's going on here??? Did i dial a german number to reach Honolulu??? Seriously for such a big company that's somehow poor.

Probably a young intern from Easter Europe. Recently immigrated to Germany.

[pdxindy]

Well, the economic situation is generally difficult and certainly not only since Corona. Probably many will postpone their purchases of plugins and hardware.
Maybe that NI does not have the confidence of the users as an innovative company anymore. They are just slow and users have the feeling that products are not being developed further.

For example, Massive X... this was not the idea of NI, but was developed by Maik Daliot and later transferred to NI to be fully developed and made public. But NI itself should have had the idea to develop a new version of Massive years ago (the same with Absynth).
It's a big company that unfortunately has become very inflexible.
We'll see where the journey goes

NI is an odd mix... their sonic DSP is as good as any in the world... at the same time, the infrastructure around it is often outdated.

Massive X sounds great and the CPU use is low for the sonic quality. On the other hand, synths like Serum and Icarus have recently added MPE support while Massive X has regressed backwards midi wise from previous NI offerings.

Then there is the completely barebones browser. Yet NI was one of the first companies making database driven browsers with tags etc. that other companies later copied. I would never have imagined that NI would ship a flagship product with something that barely even deserves to be called a browser.

[gentleclockdivider]

For example, Massive X... this was not the idea of NI, but was developed by Maik Daliot and later transferred to NI to be fully developed and made public. But NI itself should have had the idea to develop a new version of Massive years ago (the same with Absynth).
It's a big company that unfortunately has become very inflexible.
We'll see where the journey goes

Mike Dalliot made name and fame with his reaktor creations , the next step was obviously c++
Afaik he has always been affiliated with N.I.

[goldenanalog]

- and then all of a sudden: there is an Absynth-X or a FM-X announced and marketed - it could certainly happen - a significant rewrite of either will create a lot of interest. You betcha. But the POV i would argue from here/now is that once you position yourself with a Komplete package of some sort, then when NI's deal time rolls around (which is likely coming up in June) - Native Instruments is the best SAMPLE deal available. For myself: If everything goes according to recent history (past few years) ill be upgrading to Komplete Ultra 12 Special Edition for something under $300 USD - that's crazy good!

i read thru this thread before my comments - all points taken; but regardless if NI's vector is Full-Time development (unlikely) or a company that buys others' content to sell in their packages (more likely) - and also keeps a leg in hardware: they'll probably continue to be around for a while - far too many dependencies on Kontakt as a platform, for one thing.

These are tough times; and it's likely going to take a while for all of it to turn around.

[GRUMP]

Companys that are driven by Investments often focus on the Return on Invest at a certain Point. That might well be. It is simply rational to decrease further Investments and focus on the Return, especially when the Rates decline

[chk071]

I have a feeling that NI doesn't really make much money with Massive X or Super-8. So... I'd think it's questionable if we really see a successor to Abysnth (ugh... not really much to earn with that...), or FM 8 (more likely, but, still...).

[Ben H]

Why do we have the same ridiculous NI-is-dying, NI-is-on-their-last-legs threads, every 6 months or so?
It's almost become a trend.
It's nearly as bad as the fake celebrity death posts.

NI is not going anywhere anytime soon.

[chk071]

Totally agree. (Might not have come over that way from my last post)