My new year wishes for NI

I wholeheartedly agree with everything you've said and I do believe NI knows this all needs improvement. As a person that comes from a commercial product development background I honestly feel for NI during this time period given all that's been transpiring within the industry such as converging on new standards with MIDI and VST's. That means the race is on for all companies in this segment to get cohesive products out that deliver on these promises while at the same time trying to deliver new advancements in their current product line.

It reminds me of what I experienced in the 80's and 90's as computer systems began to get smaller and more powerful and standards for interoperability between different computers began to emerge and then the overwhelming promise of the Internet as it began to become a reality on every desktop. Balancing the demands from users for more features while trying to envision how to best incorporate all these new standards was a very daunting task and often the industry didn't guess correctly resulting in the failure of MASSIVE leaders in the industry such as Digital Equipment Corporation and Wang Laboratories along with the total retooling of the core business models of giants like IBM.

I don't think we're quite at that level yet, but it's still a fairly sizeable gorilla in the room right now. Especially when you begin to ponder the potential impact of how to design and incorporate the promise and capabilities of generative AI and how that shapes into your product line.

But that's the business NI has chosen to be in, but I do hope users can be a little understanding about what is boiling in the background and learn to be patient and encouraging. It's going to be rough for a little bit of time right now.

I have to disagree or at least limit my judgement simply because I don't really understand how their development efforts are organized, but given what I experienced as outlined in my response I'd give a lot of weight to available bandwidth on the development team and the need to give users at least some of the things they can deliver now. That's the most typical situation in the conditions they're dealing with. That often leads to prioritization differences between what different individual users might want and what their marketing efforts indicate for the broader market. And the focus of where they feel they need to drive the products.

I personally think, based on what I've seen recently, they seem to be much more driven toward addressing the DJ and Dance audiences in the products they're bringing out possibly because they see that as a bigger opportunity for new users, but that's just a guess from my observations.

The general lack of support for many existing products coupled with huge disappointments in recent software and hardware development has forced me away from using NI products.

I hope they get a grip and changes for the better are afoot.

Therefore, my only new year (utopic) wish for NI is just one: somebody really interested in the company (and not just the money) acquiring it.

I’m sure this would solve a lot of the issues.

Or…someone in the company so brave to show to the Private Equity guys all of these critics and them understanding what they are doing is the key to a failure.

Even more utopic…

What they don’t get is that if they let the “containers” (Maschine, KK, Kontakt) slowly become less and less interesting, they will not be able to even sell the products that depend on them and that their “data collection” says are the milking cows.

They are so lucky to have ereditate some really important products their predecessors have created: NKS, Kontakt, Maschine and an ecosystem in which hardware/software integration was really the focus (it seems they have forgotten even this). Those are the things that made NI big and allowed them to sell Expansions and Libraries.
But you can’t continue to sell Maschine Expansions if you let Maschine slowly die…

And if they lose the things that make their Expansions and NKS Libraries stand out compared to others, they just become “normal” Sound packs and Libraries…of which we have plenty of choice elsewhere…
If you sit on your laurels and decide to prioritize only products that are an easy cash flow, you won’t last too long. Nowadays users have too many competitors to chose from.

Specially if what you release is not well done/well tested/innovative.

You can’t release half baked products just to bring immediate cash in and then say “it will become better later”... Users are not THAT stupid: fool them once, fool them twice…and then they learn… and go look elsewhere. And instead of evangelizing, they’ll trash talk. And your sales will decrease even more. Which is what is already happening.


If Mercedes wants to sell their leather seats, it must be sure drivers own their cars…otherwise they’ll sit on some other brand… The engine must be nice and good, not because it’s the thing that makes you earn the money, but because it allows you to sell everything else (the seats, the gear knob, the air conditioner, the car body,…). And there you’ll make the money. They can’t say “the luxury interiors are where we gain most money, so let’s sell only this”. They need a structure where the luxury can be mounted.

It’s the proverbial snake biting its own tail

I really hope they will take up the support forum idea, all the great posts are drowned in support posts all the time