Apparently, Adobe’s Creative Suite 4 was launched the other day, and I am absolutely astounded by the significant price of the software.
I have always thought that Adobe’s products were severely over-priced, but I don’t even remember CS3 costing nearly as much as the retail price of CS4. Has the company lost its mind?
Are people and businesses, especially in today’s economy, really going to pay $2,500 for the master suite, $1,800 for the Design Premium suite or $1,700 for the Web Premium or the Production Premium suites?
Will people actually pay more for Adobe’s software suites than most spent on the computers on which they will be installing? Will they shell out five to ten times more for the design/development software than they did on the operating system on which they will be running the software (the current price of Windows Vista Ultimate – full version – is $319 – most Linux builds are available for free, and the boxed versions usually average between $50 and $100)?
Are people truly still willing to shell out $1,000 just for Adobe PhotoShop? Is PhotoShop really still that much better than Corel Paint Shop Pro (which retails for ~$99 – $60 for the upgrade) or GIMP/GimpShop (which is completely free and works completely cross-platform)?
Because I work for an educational institution, we are able to get a discount, but Adobe’s educational discount is a little strange. They only offer the full version of each product to educational institutions, and they sell it at the cost of the upgrade package. They do not offer the upgrade package to educational institutions.
When CS3 was released, we picked up the Design Premium suite for around $300. The educational edition of the Design Premium suite is now selling for twice that price.
Do you think that this pricing structure is a result of the massive software pirating that occurs with Adobe’s products, or is it possible that it’s the other way around?
4 Responses
maybe they price it for the agencies who don’t care?
i do agree – i remember when $399 for photoshop was considered absurd.
I agree that the price is too high, but yeah, photoshop really is better and a good deal different that Paint Shop Pro, which is what I used to us to edit graphic and build websites back in the sixth grade. (Really) But $2500 is ridiculous. $600 to upgrade is also a ripoff. Not only was almost impossible to find “what’s new” on Adobe’s website, but after I found them it wasn’t near worth the price for the upgrade.
Yeah I can’t believe Adobe could actually ask that much money for the Creative Suite. It’s a lot to afford when you’re a small business design studio, but it’s been over priced since it came out, and I doubt Adobe will change any time soon.
I think it is too expensive…