If you want to survive in business you must CONSOLIDATE WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE before expending to new territories!!!!!
For example, try to work out the performance issues on macs, try to make current Live fonctions more usable, improve pitch shifting. Soon Im scared I'll have to spend money to buy Melodyne coz I am really sick of Live's sometimes mediocre pitch shifting capabilities (espescially when playing with the "transpose" envelope of a clip, a "revolutionnary" fonction introduced with Live 3 but that still doesnt work fully well) Why don't you implement quality pitch shifting, which is in the domain of elastic audio - your territory- instead of releasing a FM soft synth???
By releasing Operator, you just dispersed your energies and dissolved your image. My humble advice would be "Do one thing, but do it well" We now got very far from the initial positioning of the product of "an audio sequencer you can play like an instrument." And let's avoid talking about the pricing policy!!!!!...
So... why Operator seems to be such a bad marketing trick? because it isn't one... It's Robert's little baby.
Robert Henke is Ableton's Bill Gates. He's "the ego" behind the company. Live came to life because someday this guy got unsatisfied of the sequencers on the market and decided to create the audio sequencer HE needs. For himself. It happened to be right, because obviously lots of other guys felt just like him and embraced Live as their new favorite music making tool.
Did you guys read "the operator's story" on this site? here are some Robert's quotations:
"I have always had a special fascination with early digital synthesizers"
"As I began researching and prototyping a synthesizer, I continually compared my own creations to the hardware machines that I own and love"
"In my own musical works, I use FM more than any other form of synthesis"
"The result is Operator, which for me stands well beside the hardware instruments that I own and love in terms of sonic depth and character"
"my fascination, my own creations, my own musical works, me, me, me, me, me!!!!!!! "
Yep, my verdict is: OPERATOR = ROBERT HENKE'S EGO TRIP.
On one hand, I respect strong individuals who make their dreams come true. Robert seems to be one of them. I am thankful to this guy and wish him the best. On the other hand, I think this time the genious touch was not there.
If Ableton as a COLLECTIVE company wants to survive, they will have to relie not only on Mr Henke's tastes.
Ben
PS: if Operator itself isn't a profit-driven marketing trick, the forced incorporation of the demo in the v 4.1 is though!!!!
