Has NI Lost It's Way?

Pretty sure people always want that.

Could say the same about .. the cassette deck allowing to record from the radio and sampling it.

That's really how I feel too.

The standalone M+ interested me greatly and seemed to be what a lot of people were asking for when I first heard about it and saw the pictures. It just wasn't ready when it arrived to market so I gave it a wide berth because it got the bad press and feedback from a few people (and a lot of people still use and quote the early bad feedback to talk it down when they probably haven't even tried one out for themselves). I might never have tried one for myself due to the countless negativity towards the M+, but one day, I re-checked the specs, there was a deal on and I took the plunge and loved it.

I do think if more people actually tried one now, at least if they've had a similar path that I have had in the groovebox market, then a lot of those people would feel like their prayers have been answered. I know there will always be people that think they need specific features so this might never satisfy them, but if they approach it with a blank slate from seeing what it could do and how easy it is to use and think about the bigger picture that the speed and quality of these equates to a large output of polished sounding beats and actual music pretty quickly, then maybe they would see it's real strengths and not worry about it's shortfalls. It's almost a greatest hits of some of my favourite other grooveboxes and then some.

So NI's sales and returns of their investment will probably force their priority of where to put it's budgets and if people keep talking NI down, even people who accept that this is a great machine but are just wanting more, then there's less chance of future development happening I would expect.

I come here some days and some people have just bought one and are mad because it doesn't have a feature that they assume (rightly or wrongly) that they need. Or have seen something in another machine and start demanding we have it or we all will go on a rampage setting fire to every village en route to NI HQ or something. Then there's the old school users that have been with NI forever looking for innovation and a steady output of fresh features. It can look like a large proportion of users are less happy with their Maschines than other users of other gear.

But try other gear if you can and learn about what it offers and if the headline grabbing features are so well implemented that they will change everything forever. A lot of speed and amazing output of the Maschine's projects can always be arranged and added to later, but ideas and burst of productivity can come and go in a flash and if you're using clunky gear you might quickly lose momentum.

Maybe NI just peaked too early.

Sounds like wishful thinking to me.. the suggestion threads for a new version are still pretty new!

Of course I guess they could release new hardware despite no new Maschine software features.... but what would be new about the hardware?

Which is clearly most important for Maschine+ users.

The owners of NI sold their majority stake to a private equity company in 2021, essentially taking advantage of a huge uptick in revenue and monthly users during the pandemic. This is a highly stereotypical move in business called, “cashing out.” My guess is the statistics the deal was based on have all fallen off a cliff, and we all know cash is much tighter now so imo the burden is on you to explain why you think the sky is so blue. The Kontrol MK3 release was very obviously plagued with shrinkflation style cost cuts. This isn’t something I would expect if NI was operating from a position pf strength.

I get what you mean. D-One had a great thread in the older NI forums for feature requests and that must be over 5 years old now. I assume it's a new set of devs and the fact they are having open dialogue with us is a good start. It might lead to a complete rewrite of the software that will sync with the new keyboards etc. I'm not asking for much, I just want better automation, RT stretch at sampler level and time sig automation and I'm good!