Kontrol 2024 outlook: what was, what now, what next?

While I realise this is software focused and there is clearly a lot happening, which is appreciated, I just want to add a plea for a new S25. For those with an aversion to mini keys who like the more professional feel of the S series (I have an S88 mk3 as well), the A25 just does not compare. I loved my S25 as that “patch finder knock out a little bass line” desktop companion. Pretty please with a cherry on top?

Interesting roadmap and it's nice to see NI becoming more open and communicative. . I'll admit i was one of those who was gutted when support for Kontrol 1 hardware was dropped in KK3, not least because you still haven't added an option to Native Access to hide the KK3 update, and because who knows for how long KK2.9 will continue to work with MacOS updates. I love Komplete for the accessibility and it was the primary reason I bought into the platform. I bought my S88 MK1 2 days before the MK2 was announced and the retailer refused to take it back, with hindsight I should have pushed harder but i figured it would be supported for longer. It would have been nice of NI to let MK1 owners known slightly ahead of time that the end was near, as we could have sold them while they still had some value - but now they're worth a fraction of what they cost and the new hardware is (unsurprisingly) a great deal more expensive. Perhaps you could consider offering discounted hardware upgrades to those of us who own MK1 or MK2 hardware, especially those of us who have also spent a lot of money on KK collector's edition upgrades over the years. I'd also love to see you produce a transport version of the Komplete system - essentially Komplete Kontrol without the keyboard - which might be better for some of us. The cost of upgrading a control surface should be a lot less than upgrading the full keyboard, and we could use any keyboard of our choosing but still have the KK hardware interface and (most importantly for me) the accessibility.

Thanks for the communication.

You guys have a daunting amount of work to do on the product end as well as on the perception end I suppose. I like to consider myself "well informed" about Komplete MK3 and Komplete 3.x and in particular the differences between MK2 and MK3. And that is why I don't own an MK3 yet.

There is no other piece if gear in my home studio which I have spent more hours using than my S88 MK2 and I am a notorious early adopter. It has caused me a lot of grief over the years but I cannot help myself. In the end, my yearning for something new and better always wins the day.

So it says a lot that I very quickly gave up on buying an MK3 and if you ask me why, I would say it is because I felt and still feel that I have to give up too much to gain the improvements that the MK3 has to offer. I mean who really wants sacrifice so much software funtionality for a hardware upgrade?

While I do not consider myself a power user per se, I do greatly value device flexibility more than anything else. For example, I have a hard time believing that midi template users are such a tiny subset of the overall user base and we all know that midi editing on the MK2 was lacking enough! And the fact that it is such a low prioity to this day that you even saw fit to remove it entirely on the MK3 speaks volumes. You may as well have said, "If you want your midi controller to be flexible and mappable midi controller, you should probably look elsewhere".

Suffice to say (for what it is worth) that you seem to have managed the impossible. Despite my anticipation and excitement as the product release neared, I currently find that I have no desire to buy the MK3. I suppose a lot of that comes down to my having experienced the extraordinarily slow cadence of Komplete Kontrol improvement since the MK2 was released. And so I am reluctant to take the plunge because it feels like it could be ages before 3.0 and the MK3 get refined/polished enough to satisfy most users, myself included.

And even though my needs seem to have been put into a category of users that is a supposedly a tiny subset of the overall user base, I still cannot help but think that I am a pretty typical home studio enthusiast. But I don't have the data.

Anyway, hopefully the update cadence does not continue to slow down and that the forthcoming improvements described by OP are enough to sway me because there is a lot about the MK3 that I DO like and want.

Cheers.