Adobe Upgrade Policy Change Notice

[BMark]

I haven't seen any posts about Adobe's recent upgrade policy change, so I wanted to give everyone a heads up on this. Basically Adobe is saying either go to the cloud or you will need to purchase an upgrade for every release to avoid paying full price. You will no longer be able to skip versions and still pay only the upgrade price for the current release. Needless to say this is creating an uproar among the Photoshop users, the first product to be affected by this change.

Cloud and policy change post - For customers who prefer to remain on the current licensing model, we will continue to offer our individual point products and Adobe Creative Suite editions as perpetual licenses. With regards to upgrades, we are changing our policy for perpetual license customers. In order to qualify for upgrade pricing when CS6 releases, customers will need to be on the latest version of our software (either CS5 or CS5.5 editions). If our customers are not yet on those versions, we’re offering a 20% discount through December 31, 2011 which will qualify them for upgrade pricing when we release CS6.

Letter to Adobe from president of The National Association of Photoshop Professionals protesting the change.

[racer-x]

I stopped chasing the Upgrade Bandwagon years ago. I'm still running PhotoShop7 and refuse to upgrade even for free. Version 7 is the last good version before it got bloated with useless garbage. There is nothing version 7 won't do if you know what you're doing........

......and they can stick "The Cloud" up where the sun don't shine.

[BarteS]

Regarding the policy itself
I am somewhat in the middle on this one, but more towards it being indeed way too expensive. On one side I get the annoyance of being forced to renew more often especially since the changes are not that shocking with each upgrade, but on the other side they force you to buy an upgrade every other year if you are also allowed to jump from 5.5 to 6.5. If that upgrade is not allowed the .5 releases are totally useless, can't imagine that would be the case.
Regarding the timing
Totally with Kelby, buying CS 5.5 now is hard to sell, to your own financial department that is.. Everybody would have bought CS5.5 the moment it would have arrived, would they have known this new policy. It's not the price, it's the fact you know you are investing money in something which is outdated very soon and the fact you might have been considering CS5.5 for a while for some features and now have to buy it anyway; a why didn't you tell me before, would have saved me some headaches...

[Dr. Benway]

I stopped chasing the Upgrade Bandwagon years ago.

Very true for the home and average user who seldom reaches anywhere near the limit of their software.

[Lunchbox]

I found it annoying that they release CS something every year. I can't keep up with them. Now I'm using CS5. All the usable features are either already there, or, has some plug-ins working fine. Also, these new releases are more bug fix. Adobe should have fixed them in the first place.

[Krane]

Very true for the home and average user who seldom reaches anywhere near the limit of their software.

Agreed. This is something the will hit the prosumer/enthusiast/pro squarely in the face. Although he may be able to get buy with the previous versions, the profitability of his business can sometimes be tied directly to his owning the most updated software.

Yet another example of corporate greed while the rest of us regular folk are scraping buy just to make ends meet? You be the judge.