Adobe CS6 and Creative Cloud has been announced, and I’m fairly excited. Adobe is getting ready to push out their latest and greatest Creative Suite and now there are options over the usual Arm and a Leg pricing tier. This can be a really good thing for freelancers and lean shops in the coming months!
The old model for freelancers and professionals alike was “Oh, yeah, it’s been 6 months so it’s time to shell out another $500+ for the new Creative Suite.” but it looks like Adobe is going to offer their products as a subscription.
I know there will be a little backlash over this move but if you have any creative suite from CS3 or up you qualify for their introductory rate of $29 per month for the first year ($348 for the year, all prices USD) then it ramps up to $49 per month (or $588 per year).
So basically you can skate on the first year at a discounted price, that’s discounted over the usual upgrade pricing. And the following year you’ll pay a little more but let’s face it, CS7 is going to be coming out by then and you’ll be excited to pay $50 a month for that I’m sure.
Now that you’re excited, confused, a tad scared and lonely just head on over to Adobe to check out the full details and see if you’re eligible for the introductory price.
Let me know what you think about the news or if you feel like Adobe CS6 Creative Cloud will be a major headache for users.
I think this is a good move on Adobe’s part. They need to get into developing cloud computing and a loyal customer base and ecosystem, no better way than getting them happy AND subscribed and loyal at the same time. It would have been a mega-fail to let Google come out with a rivaling, cloud-computing image editing software (I know they already have one, but I mean a REAL rival) that suddenly EVERYBODY with a Google account will use.