Quote:
Originally Posted by kdramsey
I agree completely that Avid should remove the upgrade cost for those whom already upgraded to 11. However I am not sure it would be practical to fix that discount at $299 for everyone across the board...
If Avid cannot track our upgrade paths and what we paid then I am not sure there is a way to do this that is fair to everyone. Maybe require a copy of the invoice showing what each customer paid for the upgrade to PT11 then use that as the basis for their discount.
Kev
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I acknowledge that due to the various upgrade paths by Avid fixing the price for PT11 to Pro Tools HD that they may not gain as much money as they may have if everyone in that situation paid the $600, however let us look at the various ways one may have gotten to Pro Tools 11 via upgrade.
First there are regular $300 upgrades from Pro Tools 10 to 11, the normal path, and those who did pay the upgrade price. These people would legitimately be paying to upgrade twice if it were $600 to upgrade to HD from either 10 or 11.
Next is students who were entitled to 4 years of free upgrades, which included through 11. Many students cannot afford the $600 upgrade price to HD, so many are opting not to do that upgrade at all, whereas $300 is a much more feasible price for students. In the end Avid would likely profit from students by lowering the price, not lose money.
Thirdly, there are Educational licenses for schools and school faculty, which for these people it cost them $100 to upgrade. Many schools use Pro Tools HD at least for part of the system, so those would fall into the HD upgrade path already, but regardless, schools have a tendency to usually be a few versions behind due to funding, so by making it even pricier to get functionality they already had will likely cause a decision not to upgrade at all. By offering a $300 upgrade from 11 to 11HD would cause their final cost to be $400 instead of $600 for each computer they have that isn't running HD already, and as institutions run many rigs for teaching purposes, that $400 per computer will become a lot of money for Avid that they may otherwise have missed out on. In addition, beyond the institutions themselves, by offering the same discount to school faculty will allow the faculty the opportunity to become better acquainted with the software, acting as advocates to encourage their institutions to upgrade.
Next is the people whom upgraded from 9 to 10 at the perfect time to qualify for the free upgrade to 11. Yes, Avid would make more by charging them to upgrade to HD, but realistically, if they waited that long to upgrade, they likely will not be upgrading to HD, and even if they do, the $600 price is likely entirely out of the question for them.
Now is the last upgrade path which could cause some lost potential profit, but compared to all the possible profit made by those falling on the other upgrade paths that may not have upgraded otherwise without the discount, this one becomes insignificant. This upgrade path is the upgrade from 9 to 11 which cost $400. These people likely were waiting for Pro Tools to add 64-bit processing and offline bounce before upgrading from 9, so they decided 10 wasn't worthwhile to upgrade to. These people will have paid the equivalent of $300 to upgrade to 10, then only $100 to upgrade to 11, $200 less than people in the regular upgrade path which paid $300 for both. These people likely will want to retain the functionality of the CPTK if they already had it, and if they didn't upgrade to 11 before going for the upgrade to HD, the cost would be $1,000, or the equivalent of the price to upgrade to 11, then to upgrade to HD as if they had come from 10. The reason why this doesn't make sense however, is that they are already being penalized for not upgrading to 10 with that $100 addition to upgrade to 11, and then they're being hit by an additional penalty for HD. If it were $300 to upgrade to HD from 11, their final upgrade price would be $700, still $100 more than those coming from 10, which is in line with the penalty initially instituted for waiting to upgrade. Yes, there is potential that they may pay the $1,000 to upgrade to HD from 9, but it is more on the unlikely side seeing as they opted not to pay those same $300 already to upgrade to 10.
Hopefully this breakdown is good enough justification for Avid to consider adding an upgrade path from 11 to HD from $300 soon. Thank you.