Status of X4? (Confirmed or Suspected)

Hi All,
 
With the current sale, I'd be able to snag X3 for probably the lowest price it's ever likely to be offered for. But before I commit, I want to try to avoid the same pitfall I always seem to end up in, and see what the ETA of X4 (if there is one) is. I don't see anywhere that X4 is confirmed at all yet, but I also remember how unexpectedly X3 appeared on the scene when it did. Do you think we're looking at the same kind of deal here? And how much is likely to be different/new in X4? Do you reckon it might be another big step up, or does it seem that X3 might be the bee's knees for some time?
 
Thanks.

Anyway to keep you 'in the know' I have been studying cake for some time now. I have come to the viewpoint that somehow alien grey technology will be made available in the next release. You heard it here first.

I do not see the situation as a 'pitfall', but rather a great opportunity to pick up X3 at a good price.
 
Yes, there will be either another maintenance release - which would be free - OR there will be a new version release, in which case you will still have X3e.
 
The advantages are in having it now, IF there are features you wish to have access to at this point.
 
The disadvantage - if it is that - is really down to whatever the difference in upgrade price is between your current release to the new release, and the difference in upgrade price from X3e to the new release.  
 
If that total difference between the two upgrade paths is maybe $50 or so, then if I were in your shoes I would skip a couple of pizza nights and go ahead and upgrade now to X3e now.
 
This same question comes up literally every year at around this time, and the conditions remain the same, except that in this case, X3e is considered by most accounts to be a stellar version, perhaps as good or better than 8.5.3 was.
 
I think it would be money well spent - more invested really, in a tremendous release that you could jump into right now.
 
Bob Bone
 

Also you have to be careful about announcing new stuff too far in advance for sales reasons. Not only can it lead to people choosing not to buy, which is never good for a company of course, but those same people can then get angry because the new version isn't coming fast enough.
 
So even if CW did something real general like "No release date promised, not a complete list of features, but here's some of what will likely happen," it could hurt them. 
 
Plus I usually find that the more noise a company makes prior to launch, the less impressive the launch is. Like with nVidia. When they dropped their 8800 line of graphics cards, it was a bolt of lightning out of the blue. There was -no- indication they'd happen then or be so powerful. They rocked the graphics world. However when they didn't have their GTX 400 series on time they did all kinds of press releases, shows, and hype, talking about how awesome it was gonna be when it finally came out... and then it was extremely underwhelming.

I always thought the number signified the year so I'd say release is due anytime in the next five months!
As August  and December can be ruled out as extremely unlikely my money is on sometime during the quarter Sep to Nov. Having said that I can't think what could possibly be included in a pay-for upgrade apart from more plugins and I have far too many of those now.
 
Edit: I do have a feature I'd like. A 'format painter' like there is in Excel. I'd like to be able to click on a clip to capture its colours (foreground and background) and clip name and then be able to click that format onto other clip(s) instead of having to keep using the Inspector for this.  E.g I like to paint clips the same colour that have been Melodyned.  

My observations of CW selling strategy shows the following:
* There was good deals on X1 sales, some multi step procedure to get X1 Pro cheap.
* X2 was introduced with the "Content Club", which was 100% compensating the price drop during the next year.
* X3 came without any "Content Club", with relatively fast price drop and AD upgrade story. As the end effect, early adopters had to pay close to 3 times more for the possibility to use the same set during less then half an year.
 
While the absolute price is in any case low compare to the total semi-pro gear cost, for hobby users (like me) the difference between X2 price strategy and X3 price strategy is big.
 
Since X4 if/when it comes either has no great advantages and/or likely to follow X3 scenario, my answer on the original question: get X3 now, it is not going to be significantly cheaper and in case X4 comes soon it is good idea to wait for it's price drop in any case.

My bet is April or Oct 2015. I'm sure I will be wrong.

Anderton
What I'm learning is that software is a moving target. For example more features mean more time spent QCing, and there are goals about prioritizing and fixing bugs. Both are open-ended; there will always be bugs, and you can QC something forever with a million different systems. There also has to be a balance. Software companies don't just add new features in the week before release; some have been finished and sitting on the shelf for months, but there wouldn't be any point in saying "here's Update X3e.00000001 that costs $9.95" unless you were doing some kind of subscription program. 
 
At some point the company has to decide if there are enough compelling features to justify an update. If they don't include enough features, then people won't be interested in updating. If they try to include too many, then the release will take forever to appear because of all the testing that needs to be done.
 
I do feel Cakewalk has a good handle on this type of situation and whatever they choose will make sense.
 
 

There were always be bugs, but the reality is if they need fixing they need fixing. Everybody has to accept that fixing bugs takes time and money. Those who prefer stability over features should buy the product six months after release after service packs are out.

However getting the consumer on a bandwagon of accepting that their workflow or routing/stability issues will only be fixed by upgrading to the next version I feel will only damage the reputation of the goods on sale. If there is an issue about development being too expensive or time consuming then you alter the release schedule and the price accordingly.

It might be X3 is the last version to have ancient bugs that are in limbo. If that is the case I'm willing to accept it. If they are still hanging around in 2015 then that would be a different matter altogether. Recent work by Cakewalk (service pack X3E being the latest) gives me hope that these ancient issues will be put to bed.

Cheers...

Craig I think you using generalised stats to somehow prove a point. I look at it real world, it's pretty clear what needs fixing (around 70 or so bugs). The last time I saw a survey on what bugs needed fixing was never. Why? Because it's mainly a waste of time. The impact of a bug is pretty clear once you have reproduced the issue. People have different workflows, there is no right or 'most popular' workflow as far as I'm aware. Some people will be happy because they use certain features, and others won't because they use different features. Now of course if a bug has a workaround that would reduce the priority but people should not be expected to work around it forever.

Sure better workflow features are good but I don't see any trade off here at all unless it makes buggy functionality redundant. Completely rewriting drum maps would be an example here. The UI could be replaced and hopefully the scrambled egg audio routing fixed.

Let's face it there is still a backlog and catchup to do, large enough to still be concerning, but Cakewalk hopefully still has a grip, we will know anyway for sure if old bugs are hanging around or not once X4 is released so I don't pass any judgement.

Alex's "stat" of 70 would be meaningful if we could take into consideration (if there are 3000 users of X3 and say 10000 users of SONAR in general) the total percentage of ALL users affected by those bugs and the true financial impact of those bugs. We all know in each of our worlds there is only one user, but not to Cakewalk.
 
IOW do 63% or 2% of studio owners lose $10K or $200 per year on said bugs (affecting their workflow).
 
Alas we can never know that so we sit around and speculate that it's unthinkable that *any* user could use SONAR with that one truly irritable bug (you know that one) even though many say "man, that doesn't affect me". 
 
I remember when I was the head of development of a software company and single user would use that line on me but the 100s of companies that used our software (with 1000s of user) would not even mention it (the bug) in passing as being significant. We called those level 2 or level 3 bugs.
 
FWIW, as a hobbyist those 70 bugs you collected are of no consequence to me. I still record tracks (audio and MIDI) and I get songs done.
 
If I was running a "for hire" studio I'm still not 100% sure any of those 70 bugs would affect my bottom line. I may want to perceive that they do do but how can I, in reality, ever really measure that? Oh yeah, speculation on the perceived loss of revenue using the 3 mouse click work around.
 
Now if MIDI or audio simply no longer worked, or all VST/VSTi functionality ceased to exist..... well.....

Craig just say some bugs have more priority then others then. It's that simple. That's why sadly some bugs never get fixed because impact is perceived to be low.

Bapu the reality is that the list points to 70 threads with actual people involved. Some issues are actually quite nasty. It's quite easy to see what could be important, unfortunately it would probably take half a day to read all the threads so it's probably easier to pass judgement by scanning it over it 5 mins sadly. The thing is many of the issues have other threads about the same issues years ago that many people simply gave up on figuring it would never be fixed.

Personally I can say drum maps wasted two days for me, in the end I abandoned them and was pretty pissed. Should we fix drum maps? Well the arguement could still be 'no' because it could be perceived that I was the only person using them? All that it takes is one person to say it is trivial and that's that. Am I writing about drum maps bugs every day? No.

Put another way. Let's say there are 3,725.8 touch points in SONAR.
 
A) Do all users use all of them
2) Does any bug in any touch point affect the majority of the ENTIRE user base
iii) Why don't they fix drum maps when at least 12 users I know of have submitted feature requests/bug reports

There are some good perspectives here. I know that no software company will please everyone. It's a bell shaped curve. For most, they are fairly happy users. On the far right you have those that think you walk on water. On the far left, you have those that everything has gone wrong for and they think you are the devil. You can skew the bell to the right (or screw up and skew it to the left), but you still have a bell.
 
Balancing bug fixes and new feature development while trying to balance customer retention (upgrades) and new customer acquisition is a VERY tricky deal. It's truly part art and science. Unfortunately, that means that some bugs just never get addressed, and for those on the left of the bell curve for that issue, it's a huge show stopping issue and negates EVERYTHING else done by the dev team. Seriously, a customer that doesn't get the one most important thing they want can easily turn that into acting like your company hasn't done a single important thing. It's all about priority, and prioritizing development resources is a very complex animal.
 
Overall, I'm impressed with the choices Cakewalk has made; I'm on the bell towards the right. :) Would I do some things differently if I were in charge? Sure. However, I'm not walking in the footsteps of their CEO, and won't even pretend to understand the prioritization, staffing, regulation, reporting, support, training, competitive pressures, etc etc etc that he deals with. I can say that I run a software company doing over $5MM a year, and it's a tough job. I am proud to say our bell is skewed to the right, but there is still a tail on the other end. Someone is always unhappy with me. :)
 
I hope they resolve the issues that are important to you, because I know for you they are critical. Just don't believe that if they don't, they don't care about it or about you as a customer; I'm certain that's not the case.
 
Also, announcing a new version early is a terrible thing to do. It slows down current sales and creates expectations on the new release. If something happens to delay the release (could even have nothing to do with the software), you have angry customers. Best to wait until you hit beta testing to tell the world. If they are close, they get kudos from me for keeping it so quiet.
 
I haven't missed an update since the early days, but I have waited a few months to see how a release would shake out. To be very honest, X2 was unusable to me as it was never stable, and I went back to X1. I wrote this off to goodwill with the company earned over many years with me. X3 has been awesome. If X3 had been as unstable as X2, I'm almost certain I would have moved on to another platform.
 
In the end, we all get to vote with our wallets. :)