NAMM 2025: Introducing the NKS Hardware Partner Program

This is where you need to focus to be honest; is not that hard in the end, people just wants to make music, and not deal with complexity, plugins, software and all that is connected to it.

@darshie76 I absolutely agree people want to make music without the complexity.

That's the precise reasoning for these NAMM announcements.

We recognize our users use multiple tools, and that it's generally a good thing if they can use the same sounds across all their tools, with fewer limitations. This is why we've ported a bunch of Kontakt instruments to MPC, and also to Maschine.

We also recognize a lot of users lose time setting things up, configuring controllers and so on. This is why we've opened NKS to 3rd party hardware manufacturers. Moving forward, a significant number of the world's MIDI Controllers will share in the benefit hitherto held proprietary by Native Instruments controllers: they'll be able to seamlessly plug and play, automatically mapping to and controlling the instruments you use.

We're trying to make it as easy as possible for folks to focus on making music.

Why instead don't make a format that we users can implement?

This has existed for years. Almost everything out there can be manually MIDI Learned or MIDI Mapped. Many controllers, ours included, allow you to save and recall different MIDI Maps. This capability already exists for those that want it. But very few actually do it. This is why the more automatic setup solutions are favored, which is the value NKS offers. It already supports thousands of products from hundreds of companies. Now it will support several million more MIDI controllers than it did yesterday.

I understand the frustration of course.

The reality is one effort was ready before the other (different teams). The instruments that have been ported to MPC are ready to go, just as the 100+ instruments ported to Maschine last year are ready to go. So out the door they go.

Maschine+ has several long awaited updates coming. If anything, we've been too transparent about how they're going, as we've mentioned several release dates we'd hoped to hit and then missed as bugs have come up and so on. But these updates are coming.

@Chris_NI is up and running - he's been at NI years longer than I have. He and the team are working super hard on these updates and will share more soon. I don't speak for them.

No - it's for new customers moving forward only. But it's worth reaching out to Customer Support and seeing if they can extend a grace period.

You asked me whether these instruments are going to be ported to Maschine as well, because as I understood your objection, you are unhappy that we've ported some instruments to MPC that you'd also like to have on Maschine.

I tried to outline the ongoing effort to port instruments to both platforms. Since neither is capable of running Kontakt as a VST, we rebuild the instruments inside the MPC or Maschine Sampler(s). We've thus far ported very few to MPC, and over 100 to Maschine, including much bigger titles like Noire and so on. And of course the efforts continue in both directions.

You then ask:

Why will same porting not be done for your own device, the one that your users already paid for? 

As I've said above, we are literally porting content –a lot more content– for our own device. We want to continue making our sounds available in as many places as users want to use them.

I hope this answers your question.

This would be awesome! I have Console 1 and love it alongside my Kontrol S.

You will see some major partners announced throughout 2025. At this time, no plans for Console 1 though.