Native Instruments new brand identity

Considering that they still support 15 to 16 year old products with updates...

Some things are better left alone.....

I'm tempted to read something into the new logo being more of a new brand identity, rather than merely a "refresh". It seems to imply that NI is intending to become a rather different company.

For quite a while, I used to think of NI primarily as a maker of instruments and instrument platforms for other developers of instruments and libraries. And then over the years they slowly started to morph. Instruments were no longer developed (albeit most of them still supported), and in some cases instruments were replaced with libraries.

Now I'm thinking of NI as primarily a maker of libraries, while instrument development really takes a back seat.

I'm not begrudging this evolution, because any healthy business will be inclined to follow the money, and if the money is much more in libraries, then the market has spoken.

However, since I happen to be more attracted to instruments than to libraries, that changes the place that NI has in my studio. In practical terms during this summer sale, I'm now wondering, if it's still worthwhile for me to stay on the Komplete train (which I've been on since KOMPLETE 2), or if I should maybe just upgrade to Kontakt 7.

In either case, NI still has a prominent place in my studio for quite a while to come, and I continue to wish the company and the people working there nothing but the best. -- But how much more money will continue to flow from my wallet to theirs over the next while, remains to be seen.

@nico5

This is so interesting, because I do feel the same way, but when looking back to what NI did these last two years, it is actually not true. There is quite a few new pure instruments right in the same vein of those that pulled me in to Komplete, like for example the String quartet, Ashlight, Piano colours, Lores and that folksy sequencer the name of which I forgot, a fully fledged choir and much more.

It's, in my opinion, the *platforms* these things run on and which N.I. pioneered which now are neglected to the brink of being outdated and in the case of Maschine or something like Blocks downright broken when it comes to their ability to compete with the rapid developments of competitors.

If you take Blocks and Maschine (e.g.) and consider them finished, they were brilliant. And you can continue to use this brilliant product.

Left and right, though, new innovators or companies which still consider themselves innovators even though they existed for quite a while (Push 3 is quite nifty, eh?) are overtaking - with products that seem to be more adapted to making it another 10 years into the future.

Maschine has such a convoluted way of working around the shortcomings of its own architecture, it looks a bit like a bicycle that someone slowly transformed into a caravan. But you still have to pedal. I can't imagine what a nightmare it must be to be wanting to make a big leap with that codebase.

So, the most interesting thing for me will be to watch NI handle their former or maybe even new true innovations. Their platforms. Reaktor, Maschine, Kontakt, KK. The new instruments they introduced to the market and especially the Kontakt update had me shrugging my shoulders. They're cool and all. And I get a great discount for upgrading my KU license. But I have seen nothing to make me spend even that little money.

Now that's some good corporate design.

Not that there are more important things anyway. 😉

Quite funny how Kaiwan just pointed at new hardware coming and nobody noticed it…

Only Mutis tried with a joke to have more infos 😉

Unless she was just talking about new logo on older devices hoping that someone will change his Maschine just to have the new logo on it 😂😂😂

AI

NAY

Y?

😪