VST3 support - how is it going?

Maybe if someone posted a road map to something called self-respect, they could peruse it and start considering it as an option to show their much beleaguered users.

OK I can't find a poll option so l'll ask a direct question......

How many of you find NI's behaviour regarding VST3 acceptable or excusable in any way shape or form or do you feel it is an insult to both the users and themselves? And do you find asking that question an act of abuse?

We could also ask if anyone finds it acceptable they attempt to bully people that are critical of their practices and threaten them with permanent bans but in the current 'climate' I suppose that might be seen as unduly provocative. I'm sorry but I find such actions despicable and a sign of a company completely losing whatever they ever thought was the plot. Believe you me,I am trying to be polite about this, so I don't my self receive threats,.but it is extremely hard to think of a way to actually be so.

I am unsure why people even mention Izotope plugins when talking about Maschine, no matter if they are VST2 or VST3, Izotopes plugins generally have latency, Maschine does not have PDC, so you wont want to be using their plugins even if they are supported, unless you like all your tracks to be out of sync.

There is talk here of putting the cart before the horse, but at the same time demanding VST3 support, that is putting the cart before the horse when there is no PDC, PDC is a much longer needed feature when it comes to plugin support.

I have some (decades) experience in software and engineering, including management.

What I see is a company that is able to create new products, both sw and hw, most probably by hiring external teams and engineers to pull this off. Then the NI people take over to market the hell out of it.

As long as they have a running contract with the original team they can fix and update for a while, but at some point the team will disband and contracts will end.

From this point on it will be up to chance if an internal engineer has time, knowledge and energy to work on improving existing products. This is very random and often hit & miss. It looks very engineering driven: what cool thing can I think of and want to add, instead of product roadmap driven (ie what are customers asking for and what is on our feature roadmap). Vst3 support is typically not something and engineer adds for fun.

At this point the product is basically orphaned and is kept in some kind of zombie barely alive mode.

Until the next cool new product is being launched. Rinse & repeat.

NI has many relatively small projects/plugins. It may be harder to maintain than big projects... Also lots of legacy code.... And few years ago NI has layed out many employes.... Owner has changed twice in past few years.... Pressure to cut expenditures and maximize profit...

And in this situation Apple Silicon and end of VST3, more and more urgent need for scalable UI, .... And COVID. And war. And general lack of programmers in Europe.

Many smaller or bigger things that make transition pretty hard.

AS native compatibility will come in few months and VST3 along with it.