Re: REALbasic Pro Price Increase

CSW wrote:
Let's see... 250 * 2 = 500 = Full Price.

This is essentially REAL Software's pricing scheme: Updates run at 50%
of the new price. Standard runs about $100, so upgrades are $50. When
the Pro license was running $400, the upgrade was $200; now that Pro
has been raised to $500, the upgrade gets upped to $250.

I don't understand how this benefits the company as developers start to
realize how quickly they reach full price again and again.

It's difficult to purchase any tool, since once you invest the time and
energy in developing an application, you are locked in to the compiler
tool and platforms supported. Granted, you are also at the mercy of
Apple and Microsoft.

Apple's tools, however, are free. Microsoft has announced that for a
limited time (until Novmber I think), the Express versions of their
NET tools are also free.

Increasingly, I feel the standard edition of RB is sufficient for
anything I could want to do. I could buy both standard Win and OS X
editions of RB and not be missing too much that matters -- especially if
I rely on plug-in databases from other vendors or the SQLite support in
RB itself.

I'm still struggling to find time to learn Cocoa/Obj-C, but even what
little I have played with is time well spent.

RB needs to reconsider pricing... it just isn't tuned to the realities
of the larger market.

Let's hope they reconsider this pricing. I'm still not keen on the
subscription model, admittedly.

The subscription model comes, as it usually does in any field, once the
market has been saturated, but the income driving development still
remains the same. If over 90% of next year's RB users are already
users now, the sales of new licenses become a small factor.

Consider: Originally, REALbasic was delivered twice a year, the x.0
version in the first half of the year, the x.5 version in the second
half of the year; and minor updates were free downloads. This lasted
until version 4.5, which was in the second half of 2002. But as the
product gets bigger, updates take more and more time to insert and
test, since there is a lot of functionality which must be QA-ed.

Then RB 5.0 was released in February 2003. Unlike 4.5 and earlier,
this release lasts for an entire year. Small updates were made
available (5.1 in April, 5.2 in July, 5.2.2 in November), but these
were free. Revenue loss for REAL Software, while development demands
remain ever increasing.

Finally, RB 5.5 is released in February 2004. This release lasts for
almost a year and a half! Updates become available as usual (5.5.2 in
May, 5.5.3 in July, 5.5.4 in November, 5.5.5 in March 2005), but these
are all free. Again, no new revenue, either from new licenses or
upgrades.

Now at this point, REAL Software knows that the vast majority of their
users are upgraders. These are people who will pay to get the latest
version, whenever it comes. So it becomes a financial necessity to
move to a subscription model, to ensure their revenue stream. And of
course, this is what happens with the next version, named REALbasic
2005, which is released in June 2005.

In exchange for this subscription model, they promise to have new
releases no more than 90 days later after the previous one (a promise
which they have kept for all but one release). How many of these
releases are patches for bug fixes versus truly new features? You will
have to decide that for yourself.

Now, I agree with you, I am not fond of the subscription model.
However, I understand the financial realities of the situation. I will
happily pay for the subscription if the versions they are putting out
are ones I want to use. At the moment, I continue to use REALbasic
5.5.5, so I allowed my subscription to expire in January 2006. (Why
continue to pay for updates that are not usable to me?) However, I
fully intend to renew my subscription if and when they do either of
these two things: 1) fix the GUI so that it is not like the Microsoft
all-in-one-window approach, or 2) allow for the compilation of
universal binaries. But again, these are merely my own concerns. REAL
Software tells us that users prefer the new RB 2005/2006, so I must be
in the minority.

With regard to price, I agree with you that the Pro price is getting
awfully beastly. $250 for an upgrade? Yikes, that is a lot. I have
Pro because I want to be able to compile Windows & Mac on one machine,
but considering that two Standard licenses (one Mac & one Windows) can
be upgraded for only $100, it is giving me cause to reconsider my
approach.

In any case, people vote with their dollars, and only you get to decide
what you'll buy and what you won't. If you believe that the value you
get from an RB subscription is greater than the subcription price, then
presumably you will buy it. If not, I guess you won't.

Good Luck in your decision.

Jonathan Hoyle
maccompanion

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