Hello Guys.
 
I notice Waves keeps having amazing sales with tremendous discounts.  The last time I saw a company do something like this was when Cakewalk offered life-time updates.  It's making me kinda nervous.  Is there something about Waves I should know?  Or am I looking a gift horse in the mouth (not that I normally study horses' mouth). 

Probably trying to appeal to a wider market. Big dollar studios are drying up while any boy or girl and their dogs can have a home studio.

They’re putting out more new plugins than I’ve seen in years and on the hardware side the Digigrid/Soundgrid stuff is doing big business.

Waves have a lot more products on offer than Cakewalk had so have the ability to drive more revenue through their discounted offers.

They also have a bigger potential number of buyers.

Finally it looks like they have a pretty mature model for selling their effects at a high price to those who will pay to have the latest before making it available at a lower price to those who are more cost conscious.

jude77
Hello Guys.
 
I notice Waves keeps having amazing sales with tremendous discounts.  The last time I saw a company do something like this was when Cakewalk offered life-time updates.  It's making me kinda nervous.  Is there something about Waves I should know?  Or am I looking a gift horse in the mouth (not that I normally study horses' mouth). 

So were you nervous when Cake offered you lifetime updates?
Waves has been having sales for years and still here. If you wait till the sale seasons are over their products jump right back up to regular price with no haggling room, just the option to buy at regular price or wait for the sale carousel to come around again and hope that a product that you are interested in is included in one of the sales.
Not to mention that the sales items are included at their full value in the waves upgrade path to other packages and bundles.
Just my opinion and experience with and about waves.

Yeah, I tend to agree that their pricing has been looking a bit strange lately. They've been doing the practice of having higher "regular" prices with discounts that dropped those prices dramatically but the discounted prices lately have dropped far lower than I've typically seen them. Horizon is currently going for $349 which used to be about where Platinum ended up on sale. On top of this, the bundles don't seem to be getting new plug-ins like they used to. Mercury used to basically be the "everything Waves" bundle but lately has diverged pretty far from that. Then you have the recent UI refresh on some older plug-ins that I don't think have changed that much at any point since they were introduced years ago. It all feels like it is pointing to something big on the horizon (no bundle pun intended) but who knows what that will be. Maybe the much anticipated v10 is coming soon but that means these discounts are potentially giving out a bunch of WUP extensions for cheap. I'm not complaining. I love Waves and the lower prices but it does all seem a bit fishy.
 

I guess I'm feeling a bit paranoid.  I'm sure everything is well over in Tel Aviv, but it's weird seeing Waves plugins for $29.  That's bargain basement.  I'll think I'll just be happy they're so discounted.

jude77
I guess I'm feeling a bit paranoid.  I'm sure everything is well over in Tel Aviv, but it's weird seeing Waves plugins for $29.  That's bargain basement.  I'll think I'll just be happy they're so discounted.

Really depends on how many copies they can sell at $29 I think they probably sell thousands.

It seems to me that Waves have a well thought through commercial model that sells at a higher price initially to the professionals and those who want the latest and greatest.

My guess is that the heavy discounts kick in after they have recouped the development costs.

From what we have read here since Cakewalk's untimely end the problem was not the sales it was the lack of a consistent and well thought through strategy for sales balanced by the need to cover costs.

Waves Mercury has had considerable extras and updates at least in the last 3 years that I’ve owned it. Add to that, there are the 2 synths Element and Codex (part of Mercury), 4 different piano instruments a clavinet and a bass guitar which aren’t part of Mercury but highly affordable. Not to mention great sounding.

I reckon there’s been about 20 additions to Mercury apart from updates in my time.

I already had a bunch of Waves things I bought at huge discounts and I bought two more of the $29 ones during their month long "BLACK FRIDAY" sale. 
 
I'm not worried about them going out of business. What worries me more is their absolutely horrendous licensing authorization system. When I bought my new plug ins I had to install a new version of their "control center." Somehow, it ended up invalidating all the licenses I had for my purchased Waves product on my computer. Since they weren't on the Cloud anymore, I had to use the "once-a-year-fix-licenses" feature which got them working again. I really hope this problem doesn't happen again.

mudgel
Waves Mercury has had considerable extras and updates at least in the last 3 years that I’ve owned it. Add to that, there are the 2 synths Element and Codex (part of Mercury), 4 different piano instruments a clavinet and a bass guitar which aren’t part of Mercury but highly affordable. Not to mention great sounding.

I reckon there’s been about 20 additions to Mercury apart from updates in my time.

They still add stuff to Mercury but it has slowed down a bit this year and last. If you look at their release notes page, you'll see what I mean. In 2015, they were spitting out new plug-ins almost every month and they all went to Mercury. Before then, they didn't quite release as many but still Mercury got most of them. They don't have the same info available for pre-v9 but my recollection was pretty much everything new ended up in Mercury back then. Then in 2016 and 2017, it looks like Mercury has gotten a little less than half of the new plug-ins. This is all just reading tea leaves but it still points to a bit of a strategy change.