iZotope Music Production Suite 6 released..

iZotope seems to love me so much - I have 166 loyalty offers pending...

VP

I think this is one of those times to be careful and cautious with the upcoming changes and products. And a lot of it depends on how you want to pay for your software.

On the one hand, iZotope seems to be fairly heavily implying subscription. As @nightjar says, if you are getting marginal improvements every year, then that turns iZotope into something like Photoshop. It changes but it stays the same (for $XX per month of course). Whether this is a good thing or not is open to question and your opinion will be different to mine. Many mastering engineers use the same tools for years as consistency and from what I hear familiarity with the tools is at least somewhat important. Having only recently got Ozone 10, I can't see me upgrading until I've gotten to grips with it more.

On the other hand, NI is in many ways at the opposite end of the spectrum. They frequently release new sounds, as they pivot away from synthesis toward samples and sampled instruments. Yet of the key tools in Komplete have had zero updates for a decade (beyond maintenance work.) I would like, for example, to see them send a curveball and think about sustainable development within synthesis. For example, there's nothing wrong with the sounds, so how about complete new GUIs for Massive & Massive X. Soncially these are still fantastic tools, and surely a new GUI would be less costly than completely redeveloping the synth, or designing a new one. We've just had the 80s revival (again) so why not spearhead the early 00s revival with the synth that started it all?

My suspicion is that eventually if or when perpetual licenses are ended, iZotope tools will lose the numbering (which is in my opinion mostly about generating FOMO and justifying the yearly updates) and just constantly bring small updates for a subscription fee. If they want to go that way, there is little incentive to make the bundle pricing work.

I would rather see the typicial development curve of a product without endless new releases, mainly being incremental upgrades dressed up as a new version. We all know new ideas have a steep development initially, followed by a slowing of the pace and then maturation and maintenance. I think the key thing here is that from a practicality standpoint, having 10 license keys, installers and loads of modules in your DAW stops making sense. Better to have the same ones and use the subscription to update them.

It'll be interesting to see what happens, but personally I quite like owning this random toolkit of stuff I've picked up from NI over the last months.

I do not understand one thing. Why one needs/wants something latest if it does not bring much benefit?

Why not to wait year, two, three? And buy, when one really needs it, or when the purchase brings enought "value"?

And concerning Komplete bundle. My bet is NI will keep on two year release period. But yes, they might make one special release, if they "fuse" NI and iZotope product lines. Maybe K15 Ultra Hyper and Ultra Hyper CE come....

So we are now in One-year model. Komplete will follow this scheme? What are you thinking?

I was hoping that the somewhat deceptive sales-and-release cycle iZotope seems to have would improve with the new ownership, but this release irks me even more than usual.

I DO want the new products. Or, at least, I want the new Nectar 4 version, and I wouldn't mind the new Ozone and Guitar Rig Pro, but I feel a little bit cheated now and am not sure yet what I'm going to do.

I'm starting to realize that the pattern seems to be:

1. An almost-too-good-to-be-true upgrade sale, such as the $199 Everything Bundle upgrade I bought in June. Seems like a no-brainer at the time, but...
2. Shortly after, a couple of new major versions hit, which I didn't realize were right around the corner when I just shelled out for existing versions. There are often intermediary upgrade deals or bundle point-versions for these releases. Then...
3. There is inevitably a new major bundle version around the corner, and there often isn't an upgrade that simply jumps you up to the bundle with the missing products from your recent purchases. It's often some crossgrade or upgrade for an older version of the bundle which makes little sense.

Now to make matters worse, there isn't even an upgrade path from the Everything Bundle that I just bought to the new Everything Bundle, or from the Everything Bundle to MPS6. I can upgrade from the previous Music Production Suite 5.1 that I had from a while back to MPS 6, but that upgrade is even more than I just paid for the Everything Bundle upgrade a few months ago.

It feels like the Everything Bundle sale was just a way to get people to buy yet another intermediary upgrade right before MPS6 comes out, essentially making the MPS6 upgrade $428 instead of $229 for people who got in on the deal. Granted, I got a more advanced RX version out of it and that's not included in MPS6, but still, it feels deceptive.

I wish they would offer dynamic upgrade pricing that takes into account all the products you own, instead of these loyalty offers from specific products to specific other products.

I'm frustrated because I like to actually own licenses for my software rather than rent them, but iZotope is making it a really bad deal for people to actually own their products.

My Cat can master better than Ozone 10

Cool. You should turn that into a business.

Being primarily a producer/musician and not a mastering engineer, I don't have the same level of mastering skills as your cat, so I have found any version of Ozone, that I've used, to be probably the most useful plugin there is.