What is happening to Native Instruments?

[goldenanalog]

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...).

Lol - you're probably spot-on. But here's the dirty secret: None of us are into this here music thing to get rich - including a lot of the people actually running the Co's. Sure: the same can't be said for the money people (investors) but the guys and gals with their boots on the ground - a lot of them like what they do.

As far as either Absynth or FM8 go: get a creative enough team together to focus on/rethink either - they could end up blowing people's minds with what they could come up with; especially being that both have been around for years - everybody knows what needs to change about them.

[mladi]

Doesn't they make most of the money with their Kontrol-Hardware and the Komplete upgrades?

[Biome_Digital]

I severely hope they are all busy getting Massive X a proper preset browser! lol

[Sinisterbr]

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 at the same time, the infrastructure around it is often outdated.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.

Agreed. It's rather strange, to say the least, that they treat their flagship synth in the way they do: Releasing and leaving it with an unfinished, incomplete feeling, and no feedback about updates, no news, no nothing (I don't think releasing preset packs out of the blue - no matter how good they are - changes that). It's all mistery.
How is that as a message for the consumer?

[4damind]

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...).

Yes, maybe the question is: is it still possible to make money with a software synth today? Even with "Spire" there doesn't seem to be much happen anymore. All you read are announcements about special sales. Where is the preset browser, which has been announced for years, or where are there other improvements?

Maybe many developers have the same problem that the market is saturated or the users are thinking more carefully about what they spend money on.
This would explain why NI itself is very reluctant to make further developments.
Would an Absynth X sell so often to pay for development and make a profit? I don't know.

[chk071]

With Spire, I think the developers are working on Spire 2 for quite a while now, so, that might explain why Spire 1 development is a bit slow.

[Examigan]

They did just add drag-and-drop modulation assignments to Spire, but a new browser would be great too.

[goldenanalog]

...

[EvilDragon]

Doesn't they make most of the money with their Kontrol-Hardware and the Komplete upgrades?

Komplete and Kontakt are NI's biggest and greatest sellers. Hardware is ok, but it doesn't sell better than software.

[telecode]

my understanding about music software business is, all these software companies like Arturia, Ableton, and NI expanded into the music hardware business so they can sell hardware that stimulates more software sales. which i think it does to some extent.

[wetdentist]

i wonder what Kore 4 or 5 would be like right now

[rmacattack]

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?

It's called change. If you notice they have been doing a lot of updates with products out (fixing bugs). Users complain you can't run this plugin or it crashes or whatever. They have been doing bugfixes for Massive X, and others. Maschine is still getting updates. They are working on the sequencer (it's on the Maschine forum), traktor/traktor is getting bug fixes, and don't forget One Native-https://www.native-instruments.com/foru ... ts.361065/

[Forgotten]

Right now I hope NI are working on fixing graphics bugs in Massive X that cause Logic to crash...

[vurt]

Right now I hope NI are working on fixing graphics bugs in Massive X that cause Logic to crash...

have you tried it in reaper?

[Forgotten]

Right now I hope NI are working on fixing graphics bugs in Massive X that cause Logic to crash...

have you tried it in reaper?

I did, but I just couldn't figure out how to get Logic working in Reaper.