Maschine 3.0 and older devices?

the retirement of maschine controllers affects me… as 5 controllers i have acquired in the last 3 years were at a relatively cheap price…

they still currently work, even if 3 of them (maschine mk1's)require a PC

i believe an issue that may arise for people, who inadvertantly make a purchase of these retired devices, is that "if" & this is a BIG "IF" Native instruments stop selling the Maschine 2.0 software, or again force the disabling of the Maschine 2.0 software upon upgrade with maschine 3.0(within Native access)… this is something users will need to pay attention to

beyond this… repurposing maschine controllers to work with other software(midi mode) will likely be the norm, unless people dont care to do such things… in which case the prices of such older units will be driven to new market "lows"

Native Instruments has never disabled old versions of software simply because you upgraded to the latest version. People who upgraded from Kontakt 6 → 7 retained a Kontakt 6 license in their accounts. It doesn't work the way [e.g.] Steinberg upgrades work (Steinberg does this because newer licenses run previous versions of the software, anyways - there is no need to maintain the old licenses).

Maschine 3 is likely to be a paid upgrade for anyone not acquiring it through hardware bundling. That money is better spent towards an upgraded controller down the road.

People with old controllers can simply stay on Maschine 2.x.

ANd anyone buying MK1 or MK2 controllers in the past 3 years should have been doing so with the understanding that those devices are dead in the water, and any support that remains for them was merely vestigial.

No reasonable users were expecting those devices to be supported by Maschine 3.x software.

While your old systems and software will continue to work, in much the same way that old studio equipment continues to function but might be irreparable, in many cases the old and the new do not coexist well together.

In the case of both Komplete Kontrol and Kontact, it is impossible to have plugins for both of these on the same system, the new software simply obliterates the old no matter how you attempt to rename or jerry rig them.

The result is that you are left with a development cliff face. Either update everything (including all your old projects because they’ll be unusable otherwise) or simply persist with your the ‘old’ existing system.

Hopefully, Maschine 3 will find a way around this, allowing it to gracefully open existing Maschine 2 projects and functioning as a truly ‘intelligent’ plug in, able to either open and load existing M2 projects within DAWs without users having had to do anything should the M2 plugin not be available, or leaving things up to the user should both the M2 and M3 plugins be on the system.

That way older, existing projects would be protected and still viable, while being easy for the user to choose to update them at their convenience.

Because, ultimately, it should always be the user’s choice and the software/hardware should be there to enable this, not dictate it.

Maschine controllers - at least those that exist now - do not rely on Komplete Kontrol 3 for any functionality, and you can simply not update to Maschine 3 or any revision of Controller Editor that may drop support for them.

The only major factor is the Maschine software itself, and those people can simply not upgrade.

Older projects will continue to be viable as long as Maschine 3 can import Maschine 2 projects, which I cannot see them failing to implement. The controller itself does not do anything to projects that would render them non-portable. It's just a controller for the software. Everything it does is accomplished via functionality in the software itself.

I don't understand these responses. You are windmilling trying to invent a rational for an irrational argument.

AFAIK, Kontakt 6, 7 and 8 all work with Maschine 2. There is no issue with that. Komplete Kontrol is a complete non-factor as far as Maschine 2 and Maschine controllers are concerned. It isn't needed at all. Maschine 2 does all of the Scanning and Indexing itself. It works even with Komplete Kontrol absent on the user's machine, Lol. Komplete Kontrol is only needed for Komplete Kontrol controllers.

Maschine Controllers only need the Controller Editor, the Hardware Service (for software to connect to the hardware) and the Driver for MK3/Plus for the Audio Interface.

The code for Indexing, Browsing and Hosting Instruments is baked into the Maschine 2 Software. Komplete Kontrol is redundant for that. It exists for non-Native Instruments music production software to utilize their keyboard controllers.

Upgrade to Mschine 2. It supports all of those devices.

I don't even know what your point is supposed to be.

You're going out of your way to invent scenarios to make anything you say make sense.

By the time Maschine 2 is failing on machines, we will be well past the release of Maschine 3… and that will only be a factor on macOS, anyways, as it always tends to be.

Once again it seems to me that you are speaking without a big knowledge of history and what happened in the past.

Maybe this time they will do everything correctly because they are changed. That’s what we all hope.

But is the same hope we had 5 years ago (and we gave them the benefit of doubt). And nothing changed.

Same hope we had 10 years ago. And nothing changed.

Same hope we had 15 years ago. And nothing changed.

So…allow us to be a little bit disillusioned…and believe things only when we see them.

And also to be sceptic, because what we are seeing from the “new” NI at the moment is the same old story: a company trying to force users to buy new updates without really offering enough reasons to do it…just because otherwise they’ll make your life an hell. A company declaring perfectly working devices EOL. A company not listening to users (although they state the opposite) and releasing new versions of softwares (KK) and hardwares (Kontrol MK3) that are a delusion to many.

Which is really a pity…because after having waited so long for news on Maschine, I would really like to be EXCITED for the new version coming. And happy to pay for the work they put on it, if it meets my expectations. Instead, I’m once again SCEPTIC, because the first things we see are again deluding (products EOL, uncertainty on the validity of the moves they took (or better…FEAR of what they are doing, seen how they moved with kk),…)

Btw…you saying “Upgrade to Maschine 2” is perfectly proving what we say: if someone paid for Maschine 1.8 and he is perfectly happy with what it does and don’t need anything more, why should he spend more money to update to something he doesn’t want/need? Making his life an hell is exactly FORCING to update and not respecting the contract you had with him about being able to use what he paid for.

And…please…don’t go once again on the “support” argument. Nobody asked for support: you want to abandon a software or a device? Ok. No problem. You are free to do whatever you want. Give us the installation files, the activation code and then you can even forget having even created that product…and goodbye.

There’s a reason why they call it End Of Life and not End Of Support: because after it has been declared, the life of the product will be quite short…and it won’t take too long before you can’t even use it anymore.

And there’s a reason also why they don’t make the product unusable immediately from the day after it has been EOLed. And the reason is because if that would happen, probably users will really rise up against them, while doing it 1 year after (or if we are lucky 2) they can answer you “but this product is already EOL”. While the correct thing to do should be saying “we won’t support the product anymore. Here are all the things you need to continue using it INDEFINITELY (as was stated in the EULA that they changed in their favor, once again with users accepting everything…) as long as you meet the requirements”, without them having to put a single effort in it.

But…you know…that would be an hindrance to their plans to sell you the new things. Plans which, as I already said somewhere else, no longer include “give them a very good product and people will WANT to update”, but instead “make their life more difficult and they will HAVE to update”

Yes…they are really lucky to be able to count on fresh blood unaware of history…

“100 of our loyal customers are abandoning us because of our behavior ”

“Who cares…we have 101 new unaware customers buying our things with whom we can start the game once again”