Akai releases way faster then NI…why?
It seems Akai is constantly releasing new hardware and software updates.
Why is Native Instruments so slow to move?
Comments
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Probably because Akai (inMusic) is much bigger, and primarily deals in hardware which is "industry standard" and has a larger user base.
Akai's product line is mainly MPCs, of which there are many. As a directly competing product, NI only has Maschine+ (a single product).
Maschine+ only came out in October 2020, whereas the first hardware sampler from Akai was back in 1985.
I believe inMusic is able to share resources between the various groups (i.e. Akai & Denon) whereas Native Instruments are alone. Although they do have other assets, they are software based.
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Don't sit around and wait for NI to make upgrades. Use Maschine for what it is. I just bought Serato Sample because i wanted those features and if NI make an update to Maschine I'll still be good.
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It’s quite funny, because when you say “NI can’t update things fast” or “they have many users with a lot of issues” someone will answer you “they are a big company with many products to take care of while other companies have a smaller portfolio so they can be faster”… or “NI keyboards must work with other brands softwares’… or “do you know how many users NI has? Some verbal hundreds with issues in a forum are just a small part of their HUGE users base and thousands of thousands others don’t have issues and don’t come complain”.
Or “they spent the last 3 years developing the new Kontrol MK3 so they couldn’t focus also on other things”…while Akai put out MPC Live 2, MPC One (various iterations), MPC Keys (various iterations), constantly gave new features to a device like Force, which probably was not even such a successful product, being it largely underrated (but instead of abandoning it, things for which NI is quite famous, they decided to constantly improve it to show people how a good device it is…)
And the big inMusic is able to share resources between Akai and Denon, while the poor little NI (owning also iZotope, Plugin Alliance and Brainworx) can’t handle it (NI now is comparable to inMusic, not Akai).
But then, all of a sudden, if it’s useful for justifying, Akai is a bigger company… industry standard… with a larger user base…and forgetting Akai doesn’t have only MPCs but also Force, many midi controllers (APCs lineup, Fire, Midimix, MPXs, MPDs, LPK,…) which also must work with many different other brands softwares (Live and FL for the dedicated ones but also all others softwares via general midi).
Let’s face it…NI IS a BIG company…but one that doesn’t accept that the bigger you become, the more you must invest (instead of firing people and then not having the strengths to focus on more than one task at the time…).
If, as said, Akai is “industry standard”….probably there’s a reason… and if Akai is “industry standard” for hardwares while NI is for software…it should mean their software should be top of the notch and constantly updated with new features
But… it seems it’s NEVER NI fault…because they are too big…or because they are too small…depending on what is useful to say 😂
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I'm glad you found my comment so hilarious, to such an extent that you didn't answer the question which was asked.
Was anything I said incorrect? If so, please elucidate.
What do YOU think the reason is? Maybe then I can laugh at your response.
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The question was a retoric one. None of us can answer.
The only hypothesis I can make is already in my post (that is that for such a big company as NI with such a big portfolio, they are underemployed and instead of solving this, the “new” investors thought to fire more people).
If you will find a reason to laugh at my hypothesis, I will be happy. But unluckily thinking about the few workers at NI having to do the job that should be done by many more I dont find so many reasons to laugh (for them being under pressure and for us having to deal with the not perfect quality that a situation like this brings) . As said, if you want to be a big company with a big portfolio (and therefore also big sales), you must accept that you also have to invest (in this case in workers). Maximizing the profits at the expense of the workers is one of the worst aspects of capitalism
Incorrect…I cannot really know…but in my opinion your statement that Akai is much bigger and has a larger user base has the same chances to be true as mine.
Sorry if my comment was after yours, but I think even you can see the irony in seeing NI being excused with 2 completely opposed statements: they are not so efficient because they are too small and they are not so efficient because they are too big.
Maybe it’s just me…but yes… I find this hilarious ☺️
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The question was a rhetorical one
Was it? Where was that stated?
they are not so efficient because they are too big
Where did anyone say that, in this thread?
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NI's software development is extremely slow. For example: there was a 6 month gap between Maschine 2.17 and 2.17.5 for basically 2 minor fixes and a new logo. I've seen others do more in one day.
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I came here today for the same reason, this is beyond ridiculous
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NI has one product?
There are probably 25x as many NI kontrol keyboards out there than there are Akai products in total, never mind the Maschine line, which is also very prevalent.
As for the real reason, I don't believe Maschine has a dedicated team of software engineers - NI seems to have a small engineering team that shuffles around to whatever the big fire is at the moment.
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How do we the public, decide how big a company is?
A single guy making a computer/mobile game that caught on around the world and sold millions
A company with say 100 staff that outsourced everything and produces tons of products each year.
A company employing 1000 staff and releasing just 1 or 2 products a year
How is the size calculated, turnover, profit, number of staff worldwide etc?
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I think @LostInFoundation has hit the nail on the head.
There simply isn’t enough staff at NI.
Sadly one of the biggest problems with modern business is the buyout of successful businesses by investors who have zero knowledge (and in most cases zero interest/care about) the products the company sell. All they care about is maximising their return over x amount of years before they sell it to someone else.
It doesn’t matter how enthusiastic/passionate the staff are, the bods upstairs are only interested in “making a lot of money as quickly as possible” , and the very sad thing is, in most cases in these scenarios, that sentence should actually say “making a lot of money as quickly as possible in the short term, not interested in the long term as will have invested in something else by then”.
In other words, investors don’t give a dam about me or you, they don’t care if over the years before they took the company over, we bought every single product they had ever released, all they care about is what can they cheaply produce now as quickly as possible, using the brand name to try and make a nice return.
I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again, those NI staff that post on here know the problems, they’re as pissed off about it as much as we are. They can see what the competition is releasing and they can see how tied their own hands are compared to how the company was run in years gone by.
This sort of thing happens time after time and there’s nothing you, me, or the staff working at NI can do about it, all we can do is hope that long term, this time, against the norm, the takeover will turn out to be a successful one for the customers and the staff. .
If I look at two things I own, Keylab 61 mk2, NI S88 mk3.
The Arturia (released over 5 years ago) has 9 knobs, 9 faders and 9 buttons to go along with them.
The S88 mk3 released a few months ago has 8 knobs, 8 buttons and no faders.
i do love my S88 mk3, but if I had that keybed, the light strip, the 5 year old Keylab buttons, faders, drum pads etc, and a slightly bigger and tough sensitive colour screen, I would have the perfect controller.
In Komplete Kontrol, it takes a minute to go to the view midi page and assign 8 knobs or faders to the same knobs my S88 uses. That still leaves me 10 assignable knobs/faders on my Keylab.
I’m finding myself using the controls more and more on my Keylab than my newly released S88, really it should be the other way around.
I can’t believe actual day to day DAW/VST instrument users would come up with this design.
The reason people liked the Maschine Studio is because of the amount of buttons with things assigned. Likewise, while the Maschine Mikro is good, I sold mine and got the Maschine mk3 as it’s much easier and quicker to do things, now I could never go back.
So, what have they done to improve the S series mk3?
They think we still only need 8 knobs and no faders,
They think we will be happy with them releasing the S mk3 with 15 buttons to the left of the screen compared to the 23 on the mk2, or releasing it with 3 buttons on the right of the screen compared to 6 on the mk2 (even if the mk3 had exactly the same functionality as the mk2, common sense says it will need more combinations of button presses to achieve the same thing, as there’s less buttons)
‘It kind of feels like they wanted a minimalistic layout with most of the screen currently used as wallpaper, so that it looks nice when photographed under nice lighting for the purpose of advertising.
If NI’s next Maschine followed in the same way, Maschine mk 4 would be released with fewer buttons/knobs than on the mk3, and they will be convinced that’s what we all want.
As I said earlier, I do really love my S88 mk3, the way it works with nks products is amazing. I would have preferred more buttons and knobs than the mk2, not less, even a few available just for users to assign, I do love the clarity of the screen (but currently most of it is just used to display a static picture) and if what they said on their road map ends up appearing, it will be a very very awesome keyboard. But as a general midi controller when not using Komplete kontrol, my Keylab mk2 released 5 years ago easily beats it and will continue to do so.
This really really shouldn’t be the case. Or maybe it’s what NI wants, their keyboard to be designed with just their software in mind. From my point of view, I have my Keylab above my S88, in Komplete Kontrol when playing, I can use either keyboards controls to alter the sounds. In Arturia Analog Labs I can only currently use my Arturia.
I love NI products (and many other companies music products) and unlike some, have no desire or thought to get out of the NI ecosystem. I hope over the coming years it starts to look like those at the top running the company, actually are interested in its future.
I don’t want a new Maschine or keyboard every other year, no point bringing out a new model just for the sake of it, what I do want is that when one is released, it’s a huge improvement over the previous one, not 5 steps forward and 3 steps back.
I’ve just watched the NI vid for their Crosstalk Piano, started watching it thinking “do I need another piano”, by the end of the vid it had turned into “want, want, want” .
Point being they are getting some things completely right in my opinion.
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@basehead617 said "NI has one product?"
Er, no. You missed out the part before that: "As a directly competing product".
There are many different MPCs, including keyboards......and there have been MPCs since the 80s. NI just has the one MPC-alike device, which is relatively new.
Yes I don't doubt that NI wins on the keyboard front, but my point was that the MPCs are a huge thing for Akai, and NI doesn't really compete in that dept. This thread is in the Maschine forum area.
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Better team. NI was bought by a private equity company and laid off a good portion of its workforce. They hired new leadership when the dust settled, and the focus now seems not to be aligned with what customers want. They are using usage data to make decisions and choosing to defend the practice despite all the negativity popping up on online forums about feature removals. Lately, they’ve been rationalizing the online complaints as a small group of loud users. Time will tell how it all shakes out, but I for one have basically given up on them and stopped making new purchases.
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This. Exactly nailed down!
I am an NI customer for many years already, and this is exactly what I feel as well.
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Akai is a better company and I am a sucker for preferring Maschine ❤️
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Because of the learning curve involved, people don’t often change platform.
NI’s choices where to invest (Komplete) and where not (Maschine) seems driven by their desire to retain market share (or avoid losing it) rather than expand it.
Akai has clearly chosen to try and expand its market share by launching products for new starters (MPC One, Key 37) . Also, its frequent updates and new features project an image of dynamism and innovation and of a company that’s going places.Undoubtedly NI will retain some or even most of its user base, at least for VSTs. But with its current strategy it will stop acquiring new users and will lose a large proportion of its current base.
That’s perhaps a good strategy if you want to improve short term profitability .
Personally I don’t want keep investing my money and time in a platform that doesn’t believe in itself….
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