Whats somewhat humorous to me is that for quite sometime it was a frequent conversation point that Cakewalk should stop forcing customers to pay for synths they already had, for plugins that would not be used because of the quality of third party VST options availlable, for .... well you get the drift. Well the day comes when Cakewalk listen to this concern and go to an À la carte system for additional plugins where if you don't want it, you can choose not to buy it - leaving the choice to have it or not up to the end user, and guess what the end result is - people complain that either they are not getting it for free, or that it's an evil plot to reduce the functionality of the core product.
Funny how these things work.
ProChannel seems to be (from the development effort put towards it and the quality of modules released) a successful product for Cakewalk, one that is generating revenue for them. I can't possibly see how that's a bad thing. I've bought into the concept for similar reasons to others - I like the way it works into my workflow. Will I buy every PC module? Who knows - if I find the plugin useful to me, I will buy it. I could choose to spend my money on third party plugins as well - but it's my choice, one of the benefits of an À la carte system. For many years Cakewalk has had portions of it's development dedicated to optional components for the various levels of their base product - this is nothing new. The core product remains.