The issue is not really the price.
 
The issue is the usability of the product. Of course the cost of 300.00 for a perfectly functioning upgrade from X1 to X3 would be reasonable. It may even be reasonable for an X3 that fails to perform as specified, as have all of its predecessors. The Cakewalk products (even when you only consider the features that actually work) are a tremendous bargain compared to a lot of the software that is on the market.
 
What people are upset about is not that they are not getting their money's worth out of that upgrade path, but that, given the history of Cakewalk in repairing their software,  the product that they get in paying for two upgrades is very likely to be a Sonar X3 that will also be retired before it is working as promised, just as X1 and X2 were retired before they were repaired.
 
But if you want to shed a tear do so for the poor sods who are going to shell out 600.00 for a new DAW that will also not work as promised.

Although it's very tempting to purchase the upgrade I've been pretty happy with X2. Barring something pretty spectacular I think I'll hang with X2.

slartabartfast
The issue is not really the price.
 
The issue is the usability of the product. Of course the cost of 300.00 for a perfectly functioning upgrade from X1 to X3 would be reasonable. It may even be reasonable for an X3 that fails to perform as specified, as have all of its predecessors. The Cakewalk products (even when you only consider the features that actually work) are a tremendous bargain compared to a lot of the software that is on the market.
 
What people are upset about is not that they are not getting their money's worth out of that upgrade path, but that, given the history of Cakewalk in repairing their software,  the product that they get in paying for two upgrades is very likely to be a Sonar X3 that will also be retired before it is working as promised, just as X1 and X2 were retired before they were repaired.
 
But if you want to shed a tear do so for the poor sods who are going to shell out 600.00 for a new DAW that will also not work as promised.

That is very interesting and is not my personal experience of Sonar. There have been bugs that annoy me, and manifold graphics glitches too. But nothing so drastic that I have felt that my money has been poorly spent. Then thing that causes me more frustration are the features that appear in other DAWs but not in Sonar. 
 
Is X3 going to cost $600?

I really do get a kick out of the people trying to justify the price hike.

Inflation.

gswitz
It has proven to be a sustainable maintenance fee for me for a while now. It's like a magazine subscription.

Exactly this.
 
I've spent more on SOS magazines over the last year than the price of the upgrade.
 
It's all about perspective.

That's all well and good except I've already paid $600 for X2 (X1 Production Suite + upgrade) and it's still fidgety. I like X2 and I like Cakewalk but the trust is broken. I blame Roland for interfering with how the bakers conduct their business. If they had released one more decent patch I'd be inclined to agree with you (OP that is) but X2... well I've already stated my issues before and really they are quite minor but they ARE intrusive and hinder a happy workflow.
 
That said the last upgrade was indeed worth it for the additional plugs. TH2 is awesome and getting the starter version and upgrade path was WELL worth it (and I can still get more out of it when I buy MarkII Bass). R-Mix is another impressive program (not sure the full version is worth the price as the base version is quite slick as it is). Breverb... well I don't like it as much as others but I haven't fiddled with and even still it's nice to have all those extra options. If I hadn't already owned the Production Suite the addition of the full version synths would have been another huge bonus and even the content club stuff, although for the most part not really my cup of tea, had some useful items in it like the Groove3 pass (taught me a LOT).
 
But the DAW itself... well again significant improvements that I very much enjoy like the timeline zoom and take lanes BUT the new stuff was kind of half implemented and not followed up on properly.
 
All in all was the upgrade price worth it? Hell yeah... but not necessarily for the DAW itself but for the add ons and really how many more random plugs do I need? If I didn't already have BFD eco the Addictive Drums addition would have me interested but I think BFD is superior (I tried the AD demo before finding out about BFD and it is indeed nice but not AS nice as BFD for my needs). Melodyne? Okay that's cool but I'm actually moving towards Izotope Suites and that includes Nectar. They just seem like a good solid company with good solid plugs. Besides I haven't even tried V-Vocal yet and it might work fine for what I need to do.
 
So I ask you this... are we paying for a DAW or cross promotion plugins and doodads?
 
I simply need audiosnap/time stretch to work, have less random bizarro behavior and graphical glitches and reliable editing (not things getting randomly selected and dropped willy nilly). Some workable notation tools wouldn't hurt either (but I can live without those).
 
I'm not seeing those things particularly mentioned in the leaks. Also the silence/secrecy has been unnerving especially considering one of the deciding factors for me to join the Sonar club was all the reports of how interactive the Cake team was with the user base. The competitors didn't have those types of glowing reports. It is indeed important... especially for impatient OCD freaks such as myself.
 
Food for thought.

Oh... and my point was for me $150 isn't worth it. For those that need a good drum program, heavy duty integrated pitch correction or want to use VST3 then yeah... maybe (oh and I think I saw Strum in there which might be nice for our non guitarists... which I am not).
 
What WOULD have been worth it is a $50 patch to fix the take lanes, graphical/editing bugs and general mayhem. An updated and reliable audiosnap and improved notation would have tempted me at $100. A bunch of extra plugs I don't really need/want at $150? Nope. Sorry.
 
Maybe after the release something like this could be implemented for those of us staying behind. $50-100 to fix X2. I'd pay if it was reliable.

Why Beep do you expect different behavior from CW when for as long as they have been on the net they have never given out information in advance on new versions.
 
Right now I'm looking at BFD3 and trying to figure out what it will be like. FXpansion is not offering much in the form prerelease information. 

Off Topic - have you seen the GUI of the soon-to-be-released BFD3?
 
http://www.gearslutz.com/...-soon.html#post9454820