Lately it almost feels as if VSL are brainstorming marketing ideas to push away their long term customers. I have certainly spent well upwards of $10K on VSL libraries and software in the 8 years or so that I have been a user. I am definitely a fan (especially of their classic VI & MIR products), and a massive part of my workflow is based around VSL products.
Recent marketing strategies (sys preorder, synchronised libs, now this) however are leaving me disillusioned and increasingly tentative about purchasing new VSL products. I bought VEP6 under then impression that it would always include enough licenses to enable networking - that was part of the deal - networking is THE major feature of VEP. Had I been aware that VEP7 would be a functional downgrade - there is no way I would have bought VEP6.
It seems as if the synchronised libs were like VSL testing the waters to see how many old users would buy something that they alread have, again. Obviously that worked (I fell into the trap unfortunately - mostly out of fear that the superior VI Pro Player will eventually stop being supported), and now they have learned that they can make their old users re-buy things, presumably because it worked the first few times.
I'm not going to play this game anymore. As it stands, I will not be buying VEP7 unless the new features (that are not FX) are good enough to SIGNIFICANTLY improve my workflow (and my expectations for VEP7 are low - how good could it be if you don't even know what the features are). If it incuded 3 licenses, as I was under the impression that it would when I bought VEP6, I would most likely have bought it once the features become available. It is unlikely that I'll ever preorder anything from VSL ever again - DS3 would be the only exeption to this, as long as it wasn't a synchronised version.
Don't push away customers. That doesn't make sense.
