No Standalone Upgrade Pathway For CS6 Apps

Question

As many of you who are regular in the forums know, I am a supporter and early adopter of Creative Cloud.
However as few you are ready to admit, I'm not a blind sheep drinking the red Adobe Koolaid...
There are in fact glaring flaws in Adobe Creative Cloud, both in terms of the business model and some the Applications methods.
One of these is the overall upgrade pathway which has changed dramatically...
On top of limiting the Upgrade Pathway to 2 versions back (CS5 and 5.5), Standalone products have been elimintated from the upgrade pathway.
As many of you know the standalone upgrade pathway has been a beneift Adobe has provided since CS was first introduced over 10 years ago.
Now only Bundle users of these previouis versions can upgrade. Anyone else has to buy new Bundles outright meaning that their older standalone license provides no addtional value or upgrade opportunity/savings as it had in the past.
I pesronally don't understand this from a business point of view as announcing this change and allowing 6 months before closing the standalone upgrade would have been financially beneficial. See unlike most people who are complaining about Creative Cloud subscription model, I don't believe Adobe is doing it to "rake in the cash" or because its a "scam".
If that were true, announcing the upgrade pathway for Standalone products would be ending and putting a countdown clock would have made them huge revenue as I anticipate the following would have taken place:
Standalone users of Products like InDesign, Illustrator, After Effects and Flash, would have upgraded to Design Standard, Design Premium, Production Premium or Web Premium to get the most out of their Standalone product in terms of savings without moving to Creative Cloud, and to be able to leverage those other products without moving from the box model if they plan to expand their business in the future.
Studios and Agencies with older individual boxed products would have upgraded to take advantage of savings and still be able to stay out of Creative Cloud.
Freelancers using any one of the three "Trinity Products" (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator) would have upgrade for the $500 difference as this is less than a year of Creative Cloud and would allow them to keep a box product if they plan expanding their services within the scope of the Trinity.
While I don't appreciate this as I was looking at getting some value and savings out of some old standalone products I have on various machines throughout the years, it tells me for certain that there is more to this than money (which I realized early and have been trying to point out).
It may be a STRONG ARM and forceful tactic, but Adobe is trying to move as many people as possible on to a SINGLE CODE BASE and they anticipate they will be able to do it within 3-5 years using their current aggressive strategy.
Why some of you may not care, those of you who are either into technology, do alot of collaboration or are intruiged by some Adobe's business decisions will want to read on about what I'm seeing here.
Those of you who have ever had to manage a large website without the benefit of a CMS know that when you have to update something "minor" it can have major implecations. Especially if certain indivual pages or functionality were "inherited" from how someone else coded the site before you and changing too many things to be more efficient would require a complete tear down and overall. Adobe CC was that tear down and overall as they scrapped much of the legacy code that was still around in CS6 (which also had huge coding overhauls). For example, there was a lot of junk code in the Mac version of InDesign even in CS6 and they upgraded that product to a 64bit version, which is a huge deal when you are doing 1000 page technical manuals in InDesign...
Now imagine that you have to manage maintaining for all OS versions for the forseeable future all 12 of the main Applications in versions CS3- CS6 and CC that is over 70 Applications to maintain the codebase for. Imagine being told you have to maintain that many websites, all with their own indiviudal logic, quirks and standards with huge gaps of inconsistency in between.
Now imagine you could make the decision to only have to maintain 24 and eventually just 12...
Now if your in video production or print production, imagine you never have to export or package your files to accomodate for the fact you and someone else may be on a different Adobe version.
Now you can see why these tactics are being enforced even though in the short term they actually cost Adobe money and potentially even customers. Its a long end game based in the logistics of support, management and reallocating those resources to moving forward and eventually only ever building around a singular code base. Instead of Adobe dividing resources and attention across the legacy products everything will laser focused on maintaining what I refer to as "Adobe Solid (CS6-CC)" vs "Adobe Legacy (CS1-CS5.5)". Even just supporting "Modern Adobe (CS3-CS5.5)" would be (and has been) very labor intensive.
Microsoft made a similar attempt to reduce their burden by abandoning support of all Windows versions prior to Vista.
When you detach from the emotional sense of shock, betrayal or what have you and put yourself in the position of making a productivity based decision that reduces your own overhead and cost, its hard not understand where Adobe is coming from here. In their situation I think most of us would make the same choices. Companies who make decisions based on customer reactions, shock value etc. instead of figuring out what is and is not sustainable.
Also if you look at the long term in 3-5 years most Adobe users will be on either CS6 or CC. Eventually Adobe will not support CS6 on new operating systems which means 5-8 years from now we can expect the majority of Adobe users will be on Creative Cloud, consolidating the ecosystem ( a very Apple like idea actually). Eliminating several problems in terms of compatibility within the Creative Services Industry and reducing Adobe's burden in managing Adobe Legacy and thus internal cost, which will ideally translate eventually to reduced cost to customers or added value to the Creative Cloud product library.
I can be optimistic in this way because of Adobe's track record in adding value and services, discounts etc in the past, and the fact they have not raised rates. Since CS was introduced over 10 years ago if anything the rates have gotten cheaper even while the software continues to improve. For all of what Photoshop did for the price 10 years ago, the price today is the same and its is so much more than a mere image editing progam, now capable of Video, Animation/Motion Graphics, 3D modeling, Some Web Design, it really is the swiss army knife  of the Creative Services Industry.
So am I annoyed at the Upgrade pathway being narrowed down to nothing. Absolutely. Do I think it was done purely for greed. No. It doesn't make sense, I would literally be trying to give me money and they are not giving me a way to do it, because they aggressively are on a path that is about a larger goal than taking that money from me today. Do I feel alienated, yes on the surface. Do I still understand and support the decision, Absolutely.
When something is the right choice, its the right choice, regardless of whether it is right for you. I can't argue with practicallity even when I'm screwed by it, so all I can do is try to be on the right side of it, and get over it when I'm not. It's not something I recommend taking personally.
There were people who couldn't appreciate this when the transition from film to digital was taking place. Where are they now. The times they are a changing.

Answer 1

I have to respectfully disagree with you.... Adobe has changed to a company all about profit. For me profit is not a dirty word. we all need it to stay in business...
However... I purchased my CS6 collection completely online... I can update it when I choose... and I own it... last year we had the choice to own or rent..
I chose to own.... I dont begrudge the renters I merely want choice...  Adobe removed choice because it realized it could turn us into digital addicts... stop renting
and yes your files dont vanish but you cant use them... .... dont confuse software evolution with monopolisation and Digital Racketeering. ..Adobe made almost a Billion
dollar NET profit last year...I think they deserved it... but gouging users is not the way to go....
The answer I normally get here is well stay on CS6... and I will..... the out pouring of hate with the cloud is because so many users actually love adobe products.. I know
I do... There will be a gap in the market for about two years as other companies replace Adobes products... but it will happen.. I like many others will wait it out...
For me the ones I feel sorry for are Adobe employees who are left with the fallout of this horrendous decisicion... I salute you from afar....