They already have people saying NO. Because you lose access to all your work once you miss a payment. games are starting to lose money. WOW lost over a million players last quarter. They things you site about the movie industry are in accurate in that it only takes into account theatre tickets and not total income over life of the product. typically 10x the box office sells.
On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 10:49 PM, karl shah-jenner <shahjen@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
look at games to see what is happening with software / money/consumers, games have been one of the major driving forces behind computer hardware advances, especially video cards, as well as pushing the upgrade cycle and the subscription model. (the pRon industry is similarly the largest driver of internet innovation - online banking as well as much that we recognise as 'standard' internet stuff wouldn't exist without them but we shan't talk about them)Forgive me if many of you know about this. Was probably mentioned before.
Google it and it also shows many other links
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-14/adobe-angers-users-with-its
-savvy-reckless-photoshop-subscription-plan
Games are also one of the biggest moneymakers there is pulling more $$ than the entire movie industry in recent years. I'm sure Adobe like many software companies is looking at the games industry to see how they rake it in.
Some games are buy once and play forever, others were subscription, then you have the likes of Blizzard's money monster - World of Warcraft. buy buy buy buy and buy the game AND subscribe. Sure - apologists argue that they have a vast infrastructure to support as well as all the teams of developers working on new things.. but those teams of developers are not so much coders anymore as psychologists - and that is not an exaggeration.
pay for part one, then the expansion, then the next, next and the next ne - Oh, and you pretty much need to have bought all of them to play, and THEN pay $15 a month. You've already paid around $350 in just buying the game, now start paying to play it... That sticks in some players throats. Especially when one of their earlier games, Diablo II you bought once and a decade on you are STILL able to play online on their servers for free. The newest incarnation of Diablo requires you to be connected to the internet 'for validation purposes' even if you are playing single player.. that is - all by your lonesome. If the internet is down or they are having issues at their end - tough luck, you can't play. but then the defenders will point to the WoW 'play for free' version. a crippled teaser of the game which includes just enough to suck you in but not enough to make the experience worthwhile... so people put their hand in their pockets once hooked and the money bleed begins.
So yeah, my guess is Adobe looked at this vile model and decided 'yup, we want in on that'.
I'll bet they're already advertising for the psychologists to add in-game... er, in-program 'advanced features' to make it seem worthwhile. I wouldn't be surprised if Adobe has looked at their loyalists and thought 'heck, they're a lot like Warcraft loyalists, ready to promote and defend our product without us paying them a cent!'
Adobe won't have looked at the massive decline in the Warcraft player base that's resulted from their substandard and frequent expansions (upgrades) and they will overlook the fury and resentment that has turned loyal players into vocal critics once they cottoned on to the fact the game is THE most expensive game ever. The loyalists and newcomers will still valiantly defend the game citing the complexity of it all and the resources that *must* be consumed to keep it all going.
There's another game model emerging of late which players refer to as 'pay to win' - you buy or get the game free, play for free but if you want to unlock advanced features you pay a small amount.. it's always small, but it gets the player used to sticking their hand in their pocket and there's always much to buy. Games like Mech Warrior do this. In the end a player can spend substantial amounts of money for these little features but it gives them an advantage over everyone else in the game. Adobe could incorporate features like this in their model as well and I would be surprised if they weren't looking into it. 'Special' features that aren't accessed all the time could be used for a small additional fee when needed.
But the fact is Game companies like Blizzard have raked it in hand over fist and they got used to steadily increasing profits and when the game reached it's natural plateau (all markets eventually saturate), they pushed even harder to make more money and now they are paying the price as players drop away and look elsewhere for more affordable and satisfying alternatives.
Blizzard may look unstoppable, with games that dominate the landscape, but since the advent of the computer game market well over 200 very large games companies have been wiped off the map. These were big players!
Conversely, Bill Gates made rather a lot of money with the Windows OS.. and his stance bordered on pro-piracy. He figured people are going to use operating systems they don't buy and he decided he's prefer they used his rather than a competitors. Well that worked out nicely for him in the end with his operating systems dominating the world. Adobe seem to view this as naive..
When Adobe bring this model in and you find yourself unwilling to support their lavish demands just remember - Paintshop Pro has been a cheaper and sophisticated alternative to Photoshop for quite some time, with the added advantage that it can work with both bitmap and raster images - many standalone programs exist that exceede photoshops abilities, and a lot of the internals of photoshop which caused people to 'upgrade' are available for free. I refer to the likes of 'content aware image resizing' - something that excited many a PS buyer was already available for over a year as a free standalone program from the developer. Many resizing algorithms that blitz PS lay littering the web, noise reduction, gross image editors, unshake, 3D creators.. so much is there for free without paying a cent. Or just do not 'upgrade' - there's many a fine computer jockey out there producing stunning results with ancient versions of Photoshop, just as many of those images we still hold in such high esteem were made with old wooden cameras and junk glass lenses.
k
