Native Instruments Komplete 26 released

[mumpcake]

Yes but not usually on things that have just come out.

[noiseboyuk]

Yes but not usually on things that have just come out.

Indeed - I think we'll see 50% off individual products this time (if there IS a "this time"), nothing on Komplete.

[zouki]

Right now it's basically a question of whether I want to pay $149 to get Absynth 6 and some things I may or may not use, or $99 for an a la carte update, or wait a while for a price drop and take the chance that they end up discontinuing the product again in the mean time.

Isn't there usually a summer sale on these things?

It used to be the other way round...

The summer Sale ("old"/current version) then the new upgraded versions some months later...

Not anymore apparently.

[Sascha Franck]

I'd defenitely wait with any NI shopping until BF. The last 2 years, the BF discounts have been as steep as during their Summer of Sound sales - and this year it'll also be at a time when the insolvency dust may have settled (or not, in which case noone would possibly want to buy anything of them anyway).

[kevvvvv]

K26?
Not interesting enough for me.

[osiris]

This all reminds me of Del Monte foods here. Just went into bankruptcy - a very clever bankruptcy. Seems they have 3 separate corporate entities, so Fresh Del Monte is buying Del Monte. Same company? Maybe. So they basically restructure all their debt and get bought by themselves. Maybe soon we get Izotope Instruments. Maybe Brainworx Instruments.

[Download SOphist]

K26?
Not interesting enough for me.

unfortunately, same here

[Harry_HH]

According to you the NI bad state is due to the reason that ”everyone was at home purchasing disproportionate amounts of music software during the 2020-21 pandemic”

That is not an accurate summary if you care to read my post more carefully.
My point is that decisions made as a result of those increased sales likely proved unsustainable once those sales numbers didn't continue growing year to year.

This doesn’t make your explanation better.

You are saying that a 25 years old, experienced company Native Instruments made their business calculation in the imagination that the demand for software during the exceptional period - if there was actually such a thing in 2020-21, would continue forever.

And the bad state of the NI is consequence of that miscalculation.

I don’t buy that explanation.

In my opinion, the reason for the current situation is: 1. A misjudged acquisition (iZotope), 2. Poor product strategy traditional NI products/iZotope products, 3. Abandoning the NI own very successful product concept, 4. Neglect of continuous research and development, 5. Poor understanding of consumer behavior.

Why do you think the izotope acquisition was misjudged?

From a product perspective alone:
​​1. NI and iZotope have a lot of common customers. This increases the difficulty factor in selling bundled products.
2. NI either did not understand or did not care to think about productization from the starting point of point 1. NI and iZotope products were bundled without caring that the end user already had a large part of the bundled products.
3. At the same time, the development of traditional NI products was neglected.
4. When the prices of bundled products were still raised, the end result was increasingly expensive products for the consumer with even less added value.

-> sales stagnate -> NI's negative spiral deepens -> the end user is pissed off -> everyone expect competitors are unhappy

[freshalex]

From a product perspective alone:
​​1. NI and iZotope have a lot of common customers. This increases the difficulty factor in selling bundled products.
2. NI either did not understand or did not care to think about productization from the starting point of point 1. NI and iZotope products were bundled without caring that the end user already had a large part of the bundled products.
3. At the same time, the development of traditional NI products was neglected.
4. When the prices of bundled products were still raised, the end result was increasingly expensive products for the consumer with even less added value.

-> sales stagnate -> NI's negative spiral deepens -> the end user is pissed off -> everyone expect competitors are unhappy

Absolutely, and that’s exactly the point: the iZotope bundles were basically given a cosmetic upgrade by adding NI products (we already own).

That leads to a bundle upgrade price from MPS 8 to 8.5 of over €100 — effectively just for Tonal Balance Control 3. Then, only a few weeks later, the same model appears again from 8.5 to 9, this time for RX 12, at roughly the same price.

That’s hard to justify, especially for customers who already own the included NI content.

[GrayfoxM]

According to you the NI bad state is due to the reason that ”everyone was at home purchasing disproportionate amounts of music software during the 2020-21 pandemic”

That is not an accurate summary if you care to read my post more carefully.
My point is that decisions made as a result of those increased sales likely proved unsustainable once those sales numbers didn't continue growing year to year.

This doesn’t make your explanation better.

You are saying that a 25 years old, experienced company Native Instruments made their business calculation in the imagination that the demand for software during the exceptional period - if there was actually such a thing in 2020-21, would continue forever.

And the bad state of the NI is consequence of that miscalculation.

I don’t buy that explanation.

In my opinion, the reason for the current situation is: 1. A misjudged acquisition (iZotope), 2. Poor product strategy traditional NI products/iZotope products, 3. Abandoning the NI own very successful product concept, 4. Neglect of continuous research and development, 5. Poor understanding of consumer behavior.

Why do you think the izotope acquisition was misjudged?

From a product perspective alone:
​​1. NI and iZotope have a lot of common customers. This increases the difficulty factor in selling bundled products.
2. NI either did not understand or did not care to think about productization from the starting point of point 1. NI and iZotope products were bundled without caring that the end user already had a large part of the bundled products.
3. At the same time, the development of traditional NI products was neglected.
4. When the prices of bundled products were still raised, the end result was increasingly expensive products for the consumer with even less added value.

-> sales stagnate -> NI's negative spiral deepens -> the end user is pissed off -> everyone expect competitors are unhappy

I can't even disagree with this, it makes a lot of sense.

[nanostream]

I was really hoping that NI would give me an excuse to finally update my Komplete bundle again. But as it stands, I’ll pass. Like seemingly everyone, here at least.

Now I hope that sales don’t go down a cliff …

[apoclypse]

For the Kore lovers, why do you think they abandoned Kore? (I don't know the actual answer, I am just curious. I can't imagine they would abandon it and not replace it with a like hardware (like Maschine 1, to Maschine 2 to Maschine 3) if it was doing well for them.
rsp

There were a few factors at play. NI was always good at having high concept software that did cool things, but are awful at maintaining that software. Kore for example had to be nearly completely rewritten from Kore 1 to version 2. The initial idea behind Kore is that it would be supplemental to Komplete. You needed Komplete to get the most out of it. In-fact when I first bought Komplete it came bundled with my Kore 1 controller.

When Kore 2 came out it was made similar to Arturia's Analog Lab, where the synth engines for Massive, Kontakt, FM8, etc were all included. However unlike Arturia NI could never get it together and it became difficult for them to sync the engines and the releases of the plugins (according to them).

They also had started to work on adding plugins into Maschine and eventually decided to abandon Kore and all the tech debt they had put on themselves to go back to what Kore 1 was in the first place, basically a supplemental preset library browser for Komplete. So they abandoned their Kore users and told them to use Maschine. Maschine was in no way shape or form a replacement for Kore. It didn't have any of the features that made Kore great, and when Komplete Kontrol came about NI decided to base it off of Maschine, instead of revamping Kore.

The issue for a lot of Kore users isn't that NI abandoned an old plugin. The plugin was fairly new when they abandoned it and they did it in an abrupt and callous way towards their customers.

[zvenx]

Thank you for taking the time to give your take on the why.
rsp

[DrGonzo]

The issue for a lot of Kore users isn't that NI abandoned an old plugin. The plugin was fairly new when they abandoned it and they did it in an abrupt and callous way towards their customers.

It was a textbook example of how not to do things. NI talked about how important the platform was for them all the way up to the week before they officially declared it over. As a we're-sorry-gesture they gave a few free Kore packs to the users.

[glokraw]

The Komplete Standard tiered upgrade pricing is a non starter for me. Beyond that, the lack of new content is (thud) the sound of the sale coffin closing. Stripping out anything previously bundled is just Knowing that a plethora of newer sound content might not be used 'soon', or at all, it should still be included. Tastes and opportunities expand over the years, so having some gigabytes to peruse in 2030 can still be a selling point in mid 2026.

This is not a good example of a company trying to recover from management failures. Not that maintaining great success for decades is easy I hope they change these changes and become profitable. In my view, that will need Native Access to become an included optional extra, with standard installers available for all products.