IK, ol pal...I feel for ya.  No, I really do.  I'm sure that just like me in my little piddly ass bidness yor tryin to make as much geetus as you can day in and day out.  And when the market zigs (i.e. iphone/ipad mania) you have to zag.  But, in yor obvious ignorance, you've gone about it all wrong and alienated your core user base.  Fairly obvious.  A complete dunderheaded move.  Unless, of course, yor rakin in the semolians from all the iCrap stuff.  If you are then more power to ya.  But those of us who helped build yor bidness feel slighted at best and shat on at worst.  And you...and yor above posts ain't helpin one little bit.  In fact, yor makin it worse you dim wit!  You said somewhere up there you'd let IKObi handle it and then just kept digging a deeper hole.  Do yourself a favor and LET IKObi handle it!!! And while yor at it give him a raise in pay.  At least he takes a lickin and keeps on tickin.  At least he does his job and attempts...to greater or lesser degrees of success...to mollify us.  You just poke us in the eye with yor excrement covered finger and say how do you like that my good fellow??  That's not very customer centric.  Is it? 
 
Here's my best advice to you (as a long time user who owns most of your core products):  Shut the hell up until yor ready to announce the release of ST3.  Zip it.  Shush.  Don't say another word.  And get the heck off our forum and let ol Obi do the job yor payin him for.  Cause you, ain't cuttin it, ol stick.
 

 
Say ST3 was already released:
What are your expectations?
Kontakt has the bar set pretty high.  Almost impossibly high to actually "kompete" against it...
Look at how long HALion was "dormant".  (I'm guessing for the same reason)
It's a huge task.
 
For better or worse, Kontakt is the standard by which all new soft-samplers will be judged.
If ST3 doesn't directly compete with Kontakt (large scripted libraries), it has to offer enough niche features to be a successful alternative.
ie: Independence offers some nice features... but it just hasn't caught on.  No scripting... and not a lot of unique features (compared to Kontakt)
 
In a board of directors meeting, pitching the idea of "developing a product to compete with Kontakt" would be a hard sell.
 
I don't feel the animosity expressed above...
But at the risk of sounding like an old man, I miss the older days.
The beginning of the DAW revolution... when companies were new/small and there was close communication/interaction with the user base.
The industry has moved to more of a larger/corporate structure (to survive)... which puts distance between developer and user.
 

Jim
I agree with most of what you have said - one thing I would just say is that YES, they have a massive job to do to catch up with Kontakt - but do you not think this problem is entirely of their own making as they just milked Sample Tank for years and years with no development whatsoever, whereas NI have always kept the development of Kontakt current.
I first purchased Sample Tank around 2005 if I remember correctly - as far as I can see, very little has changed since then.
Kontakt has changed enormously in the same time
I still use some of the extensive libraries I built up over the years for Sample Tank, but I have Sample Tank on my old "Jim" 32bit machine and route it to my new "Jim" 64 bit machine using Vienna Pro - not totally ideal but works OK like this for me.
Nigel
 

Jim Roseberry
In a board of directors meeting, pitching the idea of "developing a product to compete with Kontakt" would be a hard sell.

 
I couldn't care less about ST3 -- for me, Kontakt is THE standard and has everything I could ever need, and then some.  No interest here in adopting another sampling platform, especially when the company behind it is about as far from customer-centric as you can get (they flatly told me in another forum that the notion of "the customer is always right" was outdated -- I'm not making this up).   
 
Yes, there is room for improvement with Kontakt (as with anything) but I'm sure NI will come out with a new version soon enough.  Maybe even sooner than ST3.
 
Cheers,
Eddie
 

Eddie
If I didn't already own it, no matter what they did with their current less than Customer Centric iattitude, I wouldn't even think of buying ST3 - however like many people I do have ST but more importantly many libraries. I want to still keep using these, but as I now have an acceptable workaround, IK have someway to go to make me spend money with them on the upgrade!
Nigel
 

It was definitely more fun, productive and exciting to call up tech support or sales at those companies when they first started and actually talk to the owner/developers.  That's why when possible I prefer to do business with folks like Jim...or Greg at Orange Tree...or any of the "mom and pop" vendors today. 
 
I also agree with Jim that ST3 has a pretty high bar to get over with any new release. 

Bajan Blue
Jim
I agree with most of what you have said - one thing I would just say is that YES, they have a massive job to do to catch up with Kontakt - but do you not think this problem is entirely of their own making as they just milked Sample Tank for years and years with no development whatsoever, whereas NI have always kept the development of Kontakt current.
 

Hi Nigel,
 
Yes, I agree.  
First version of Kontakt (when GigaStudio ruled the soft-sampling world) was ok.  Disk-streaming performance was not on par with GigaStudio
Second version of Kontakt was direct competition with GigaStudio.  Disk-streaming was vastly improved
From then on, Kontakt surpassed GigaStudio (dead product)... and defined what it is to be a soft-sampler.
All these years of development gave NI such a competitive advantage, I'm not sure it'll ever be eclipsed.
Of course... never say "never"... but it would take a momentous event.

Yep...I agree..

All they had to do was port the program to 64 bit and redesign the interface...DONE...
that shouldn't take 8 years....development should have been ongoing....but, NOPE,
IK decided not to do ANYTHING...literally, with the SampleTank line...
(and I own all 5 ST Products BTW...)

Because of the "complaints" in all the forums...they started promising ST 3 3 years ago...
 
NOW...that the poop has hit the fan...they're touting it as something "spectacular"...
I certainly wouldn't bet on it....as I've stated before, if it's not the BE ALL AND END ALL
of Samplers..they might as well just "shut the line down"

They won't be getting my money....that much is for sure...on ANYTHING....
10 months ago I stopped purchasing IK Products in protest of their "I Everything and YOU nothing Policy"

They came out with the New T-Racks...I converted...but didn't buy the Grand Upgrade...as much as I would have liked
to, I didn't.

They came out with new gear for it...didn't buy it.

They came out with new things for Amplitube (and still are...before ST 3) and I didn't buy any of it...nor will I.

The problem is that the most are OCD...they'll buy whatever is released...regardless of what the company does...
and the Companies realize this..so they do whatever they please...

I personally am done with that...I've got most of what I need...actually MORE then what I need...so, if a company wants
my MONEY they better take care of me, the EXISTING customer...that's what I'm talkin' 'bout Willas...because even
a lot of the free stuff out there is getting better then the "paid" stuff...

Most of them do, IK has not....end of story...that's all...bye bye..

Eddie TX
 
I couldn't care less about ST3 -- for me, Kontakt is THE standard and has everything I could ever need, and then some.  No interest here in adopting another sampling platform

I think that'll be the attitude of many users...

Jim
I really wish you hadn't mentioned Gigasampler - you have reminded me this is another product I got caught with!!!!!!!
Nigel