I’m not really sure what to say about this, Shadowfax… because I’m still kind of surprised by Steinberg’s behavior and performance. Part of me is still holding out a tiny hope that they will make good on their promise for Cubase 8.5, because it’s the RIGHT thing to do… but I doubt they’ll do it. I think we are seeing a Steinberg that has made some decisions lately – for whatever reason – to destroy their credibility, sense of responsibility and decency to long-term customers. Their silence on this issue says a lot too. They’ve even given up talking to us about it.
FYI Nuendo 7 hasn’t received the update either yet, and they were told they would get it 4-6 weeks after Nuendo 8 was released, and we’re now OVER 8 weeks for them (let alone 1 year and 4 months since the announcement of the issue!!!)!!! So it’s clear that Steinberg can’t meet a SINGLE deadline of their own timeline! They might as well stop mentioning dates at all, ever. The ONLY date they are good at meeting is a NEW yearly release date to collect upgrade fees.
But I like to consider myself an optimistic person and hope that maybe 8.5 will be a really nice big surprise in a few days or weeks. However, I doubt it. Again, their silence is telling. At least with Nuendo 7 they’ve recently indicated that it’s on the way.
Sadly, unless they turn this ship around, they have essentially lost me as a customer, and I regret sending them any more money recently. I regretfully already upgraded to Cubase 9 when I should NOT have done that, and Cubase 9 up to this point has been LESS reliable than 8.5. I own a bunch of their other products, but at least as of this moment, they have basically lost my trust as a company due to this whole fiasco. It says a lot about them as a company IMO.
Frankly, they need to STOP this foolish yearly update cycle where they release half-baked features, introduce various new problems, are sluggish at fixing older problems, and sometimes fail to fix major issues (like the whole video engine situation) in a timely manner, and basically fail to meet EVERY SINGLE time estimate they’ve given us… repeatedly.
Whoever the Cubase project manager is at Steinberg, needs to be fired. And whoever decides the roadmap, priorities and resources in general needs to be fired (if that’s a different person). In fact, as far as I’m concerned, they ARE fired, at least from my wallet, because I will not send another dollar to Steinberg unless they provide the new video engine for 8.5 as they originally promised.
I can say this with confidence: Cubase is no longer going to be my primary DAW. I have spent a lot of time investigating and testing other DAWs recently, and the marketplace for great DAW software is better than ever. Steinberg has a great legacy to be sure, but they have squandered their good will with me, and I can promise there will be NO more revenue and upgrade fees from me going forward, unless they do the right thing here.