John
Boy, you guys are a tough sale. But I agree with you.
Hey, if someone wants me to buy a $400 toy, I need to be convinced that it is worth $400. At that price, you have a lot of DAW options: You can get Sonar Studio, Vegas Pro Edit, Fl Studio Signature, Studio One Professional, Reaper, Reason, and so on for the same or less money. You are also just $50-100 of being in range of Sonar Producer, Cubase, Abelton Live Standard, Digital Performer, and so on.
So at the price they've chosen, there's a lot of competition. It isn't like they are cheap enough to have an advantage over most of the competition, nor cheap enough to be a "just get it because why not" kind of thing. They have to sell it.
Also, here at least, they are dealing with people who already have a DAW, maybe more than one. I personally own Sonar and Vegas. So they have to convince us that it does something the toys we already have don't. I have to see it offer me something that neither Sonar nor Vegas does, and that something needs to be worth $400.
And the issue with what they are advertising is that companies love to show of what makes them cool, different. Look at Cakewalk's page on Sonar: Lots of pictures n' words on Prochannel, ARA, the included instruments, and so on. They want to draw you in with the cool stuff you get, particularly the stuff you can't have elsewhere. So that all the Bitwig guys talk about and show is basic DAW stuff, well it probably means that's ALL there is. It isn't real likely they have something real cool, but they just forgot to advertise it.