jaminem wrote: ↑Tue Oct 10, 2023 11:26 am
This is great of them to do this, BUT it doesn't do anything for my worry about the state of the UA business.
Might be just me but I worry for them...
We can all speculate, of course. Drew from UA already said this offer was about getting new users - they are expecting "hundreds of thousands of new users" from this offer.
From the beginning of this summer, they started by offering four native collections - the 1176/Pultec/LA-2A/Fairchild for a very low price, only for people who haven't bought from UA for a while (myself included!). This was followed by more summer sales with very attractive pricing and good discounts. They generated a lot of business from this (and for me, healed my past UAD-inflicted wounds!
) Then this deal (and we're already seeing inexpensive upgrades to larger bundles from the free plugin - almost all their native plugins for around ~$200).
So yes, it's clear that from this summer, they have been aggressively growing the native market/business in a way they haven't previously. Whether it seems like "desperation", or "a good business move" probably depends on your outlook, but i don't think there's enough evidence one way or another that makes it look like UA isn't doing well.
As we're speculating, let me have a go: They always had to be careful with the move to native, so as to not annoy their existing DSP userbase. The rate of native ports is slow - likely because it's a lot of work, which is my general impression of UA's interaction on forums, not because they're trickling them out slowly for marketing reasons.
Perhaps the Spark native subscription service wasn't growing, or generating revenue, as much as they had hoped/projected, and they decided to pivot to more full on native sales models (low prices, lots of sales), which much of the rest of the market already employ, both to generate cash, to get new users onboard (good for the health of the company), and possibly to fund more development to speed up ports or new products, or other expansion. They already outsourced their support a while back.
So, desperation, or just business? You decide... (or watch and wait, I guess).
In the meantime, their plugins are good. I'm hoping for more ports I'd like before too long - we all have our favourites. While i wasn't planning on giving them (or anyone) a couple of hundred pounds for plugins over the summer, I consider that what I got in return was well worthwhile.
