mbrown3
Inspired
Agreed. I've never been a big fan of this model. Though with a ballooning payroll I can see the attraction.
I'll throw my .02 cents in. I generally hate these nickel and dime strategies as well. HOWEVER, in this case I think it could work really well, and here's why: I would venture to guess that very few people use even a fraction of the many amp models. As such, it becomes overkill and almost a waste for them. Features they don't need for added cost. If the initial unit came with a handful of the most common basic amp types (say, 10 clean models, 10 crunch models, 10 aggressive full-on distortion models - or however "models" are defined), then the unit cost can be kept down but those who want to invest in more models can (and probably will, gladly) do so.
That said, you could still offer a "premium" version with everything included (even at a discount over purchasing all separately) and there would be plenty of takers.
For me, this wouldn't be nearly as offensive as the typical "nickel and dime" IAP model. I'd be on board with it for sure.
Still, you'd have to very carefully consider what this would mean for the whole ecosystem of Axe-Fx. By that I mean are you going to stop amp/cab model sharing? If so, that's a major feature removal. If not, how do you prevent people from just sharing paid models? If you resort to DRM, you're talking about more staffing, more technical headaches, and more PR problems (people hate DRM, because it rarely works 100% correctly 100% of the time, and people get REALLY frustrated when they've paid for something that doesn't work right). Although it seems like this is already being done, to an extent, with the cab packs, no? Do those have some kind of DRM?
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