Adobe: There Will Be No Creative Suite 7
Adobe: There Will Be No Creative Suite 7
Many design firms buy the new Adobe Creative Suite whenever it comes out. After all, the software is a mainstay for anyone who creates on computers. But today, Adobe has announced that there will be no Creative Suite 7.
That’s because the Creative Suite is giving way to the Creative Cloud--a subscription-based model in which you pay for access to Adobe’s software monthly. And as it appears, their famous individual products that traditionally make up Creative Suite, like Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign won’t be available for individual purchase, either. This June, those apps will go the way of subscription as well. Here’s the pricing from TNW:
For creatives that rely on the company’s upgrade paths, some will be pleased to find that anyone with a CS 3 or later serial number will get their first Creative Cloud year for $29.99 per month. For everyone else, the complete version of Creative Cloud will set you back $49.99 per month, or you can purchase a single app license subscription for $19.99 per month.
For teams, the same applies, but you’ll pay $69.99 per month per user or $39.99 if you’ve purchased CS 3 or later — added perks include significantly more cloud storage. For students, CC will set you back $19.99 per month for the complete version, and there is also now a 'Teams for Education’ offering at $39.99 per month per user.
No doubt, the Creative Cloud is a means for Adobe to control piracy whilst (theoretically) lowering the bar of version-by-version interoperability. It also forces the industry to constantly pay for Adobe products, rather than sit on a collection of perfectly good software from a few years back.
As of right now, it appears Adobe has the market dominance to make this happen. But when youngsters, who aren’t sitting on five and six-figure design contracts to justify the purchase, aren’t able to pirate Photoshop, you do have to wonder: What platform will the next generation of creatives use for design?