Pnina,

Interesting thread you've started. FWIW-- here's my thinking on the situation.

First of all, you are correct. Any good marketing/sales person worth their salt would allow for an upgrade path from Complete to Infinite-- it just makes sense-- for now.

I believe there are possibly three reasons-- or a combination of the three-  for not allowing it at this time:

1. There are some sort of shell game dynamics where allowing such an upgrade gives a certain group a distinct advantage over another group. I don't know what those groups could be, but I do know e-on gave away a free version of Vue Infinite 5 to Lightwave users who purchased a full version of Lightwave awhile back. If there is a scenario by which a 'workaround' can get someone a new version of Vue 7 Infinite for just the cost of an upgrade, I'm sure e-on would not want to share these 'shell game dynamics' with you or any other user.

2. There are significant serialization and licensing technical issues. Though I think this is a poor excuse, and could be remedied in time.

3 (my guess). It's clear e-on now wishes to create a professional line of products, one which is different from it's standard line-up of mostly small studio/artist type products. To do this, they need to change their business model-- make it very different from the past. They would like to create a product line which they can charge a premium price for, as it will be used by Hollywood FX houses and major animation studios. For these customers, price is not a big deal-- but service is. Thus the new service and upgrade policies. These customers, once they like your product, order dozens of seats at a time. Big business. Big dollars. Allowing them to start at a smaller product line (Esprit) and upgrade all the way to Infinite, might in fact cost them. For instance, 2 seats of Esprit for layout, 1 seat of Infinite for EcoSystem work, etc..

Now, think of Adobe Photoshop vs Adobe Elements. Of course there is no upgrade path from Adobe Elements to Adobe Photoshop-- but in fact Adobe Elements is mostly just a subset of Photoshop functionality. Similar problem.

So, e-on is trying to create a category centric focus for their product line, but they haven't done a good job in understanding their customer, thus the issue. Because, unlike Elements vs Photoshop, Complete and Infinite are very close in functionality-- and e-on supposed the standard users would not need the very few differences in features between the two. That was a mistake. But, they couldn't name Complete "Infinite" and Infinite "Vue Master Studios Only" because the fact is...Vue 7 Complete actually is missing a few features which Vue 6 Infinite has. So, thus a conundrum.

I suspect after taking a bit of time to reflect, e-on will do the right thing and provide an upgrade path.

All that said I have to ask why exactly are you interested in this issue at this time? Are you looking to upgrade right now Complete to Infinite? If so, my suggestion is you contact e-on in a personal way and see if they can't work with you.

Years ago, I wanted to purchase SketchUp, but didn't want to spend the whole $500 for the PC product and then another $500 for the Mac version-- so I called the company directly. Had a very pleasant chat with the head of sales, and he cut me quite a nice deal at the time for both products on the condition I didn't 'spread the word.' Course now, they're owned by Google and the product is free.

So, my advice is to keep a reasonable amount of pressure on this issue-- as you're doing now. If you're archiving these threads, please remove the loons (cobraeye and such) and I believe it will create a very nice case for an upgrade path-- which we should have :-)