Adobe relents, announces CS6 upgrade offer for CS3/CS4 owners

Adobe makes a compelling suite of creative applications, which are the de facto industry standard, but Adobe’s high price points have traditionally put off many prospective Creative Suite buyers. To make matters worse, a change in upgrade policy last year enraged customers as it pushed them towards pricier subscription-based offerings. Well, if you already own Adobe Creative Suite 3 or CS4, you are in for a surprise as the company just announced a special upgrade offer towards CS6 purchases. According to a blog post, special introductory upgrade pricing on Creative Suite 6 to customers who own CS3 or CS4 is available from the time CS6 is released until December 31, 2012. Details will be announced here when CS6 and Creative Cloud are released later this year.

Creative Suite 6 software and subscription-based Creative Cloud, two major new releases of Adobe’s creative desktop tools, will come with “huge improvements” that have yet to be specified. Adobe spent more time talking about the new Creative Cloud offering, which encompasses all of the CS6 desktop software plus additional services, new tools, Adobe Touch Apps and rich community features. It also includes continuous upgrades and updates to all products and services as part of your Creative Cloud membership ($49 per month for every Adobe Creative Suite application).

Adobe found itself under fire when it announced a change of its upgrade policy. No longer would the company offer upgrade pricing to customers who are on older versions of Creative Suite dating more than one version back. Adobe specifically said that “customers on versions of Creative Suite CS4, CS3, CS2 and older will not be eligible for upgrade pricing for CS6 unless they have upgraded to CS5 or CS5.5 before CS6 is released”.

Today’s announcement is a step in right direction as Adobe moves to appease CS3 and CS4 customers with a special upgrade offer. Let’s hope it will also mean fair pricing, as Adobe indicated in a statement to The Loop in November:

Our aggressive subscription price for Adobe Creative Cloud – $49 per month for every Adobe Creative Suite application, our new touch apps and new cloud-based services – will provide incredible value for the creative community and we will clarify and promote these benefits to our customers over the next few months. The changes to our upgrade policy, for customers who would like to continue to purchase CS software as a perpetual license, benefits customers who are on the latest versions of our software. We have promotions that enable customers to upgrade to the latest CS version ahead of CS6 at a reduced rate – at the moment we are offering 20% off any upgrade to the latest version of their Adobe software.