More companies are going with this pay per month aspect than selling the software outright now. Look at Microsoft Office. They still sell the stand alone but it is far more expensive than going with the new Office 365 monthly plan.
This way they can push out updates for the apps faster and keep the same product line going longer instead of releasing a new product every year or 2.
If you think about it, the price for Adobe is almost what it would cost you to buy the Creative Suite outright. Actually if you do the math, you actually save money.
Adobe Creative Suite 6, the Master collection goes for
$912 on Amazon right now. Getting the Adobe Creative Cloud, which has the same set of Apps for $50 a month, will cost you $600 a year. Instead of paying $912 up front, you now spend $600 over the course of 12 months and get more updates more often.
So really if I needed Adobe Creative, the Cloud service is actually the better service for the price. I pay less in total, I get updates more often and have access to all the apps of the Master Suite for about $300 less. To me that is a bargain.
The same type of thing can be said for Office. Office itself for Home and Business, which includes Outlook, is $219 for 1 PC. You spend $99 for a year subscription to Office 365 and that will be updated more often and get security fixes more often than the standalone Office. In time, when they go to the next version of Office in 2 years, you will have to dish out another $200+ for the software, when you can continue your subscription to Office 365 and in the end saved yourself $20. Office 365 for 2 years will cost you $200 compared to the $219 for the stand alone product. Not to mention, Office 365 can be installed on up to 5 PC's for the cost. So if your doing multiple PC's, Office 365 is a killer deal over going for the stand alone at $219 a piece.
So yeah I can see subscription based services becoming the normal. With Cloud based computing being more stable as time moves on, the subscription based method will earn the companies monthly income over a 1 time payment, allow for them to push out updates to the cloud based services faster and in the end be better for the home user. I mean how can you go wrong with a 5 PC license for $99 a year over 1 PC for $219.
Some may hate the monthly setup, but you can argue the math and end results. Overall you save money. That is a win to me. I like saving money and having more secure products in the end.
