This is exactly what Drew said:

**Okay, let me clarify a few things here.

1. We make this offer of buy 6 now and get Bryce 7 when it is released because that's basically what will happen anyway when Bryce 7 is released when you consider our 30-day return policy. If we don't make this offer and release Bryce 7 sometime in the next 30 days, anyone who has purchased it in those 30-days will return it anyway and get 7 free. This way we get to pre-announce Bryce 7 and make it so that anyone who purchases 6 in this time frame doesn't have to proactively ask for the return and then purchase 7. With this program, we just automatically put it in your account when 7 is release. There is no sinister motivation behind this program. In fact, it is the same thing exactly we offered with the new version of Carrara several months ago.

2. We cannot just give version 7 to anyone who has ever purchased a prior version of Bryce. This sounds good, but how would we recoup our development costs and stay in business. It is standard procedure for any software company to offer upgrade (discounted) pricing for people with prior versions, not to just give it away free. I'm curious to know of any software company that has the policy of buy it once and get every version after that free. If you know of one, let me know so I can study their business model and see how they make money. If it works for any company and they are still in business, that would be an intriguing business model to put in place.

3. We removed the upgrade from Bryce 5.5/5.0 to Bryce 6.3 because you can get 5.5 for free on download.com. It is not fair on many levels for people to download 5.5 for free and then purchase the upgrade product to Bryce 6.3. We should have done this long ago. That being said, there will be an upgrade option when Bryce 7 is released and that pricing will be better than the current option to buy Bryce 7 because we do want to give people who already own 6 (any version) an advantage.

4. When we say version 6 we specifically mean version 6.3. We don't even sell 6.0, 6.1, or 6.2 in the store. I'm not sure why we would say buy "6" and mean 6.0 when you can't even buy it. We mean the current, available version of Bryce. Hopefully, you don't think we would be playing games like that and then expect to retain any good will with our customers.

5. The introductory price for buying Bryce 7 outright when it is released will not be better than buying 6 now. It would be a bad thing for us to encourage customers to buy 6 now, give them 7 for free, and then offer a better deal to customers buying 7 when it is released. When we released the new version of Carrara several months ago, the new version was exactly the same price for the people who bought the prior version and got the current version free as for those who just bought the new version. Expect the same thing with Bryce.

We've not tried to be deceptive in any way and are following standard industry procedures with our pricing. Hopefully, this will clarify the concerns that customers are having in this thread. My apologies for not being more clear from the start.**

 

“For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible.”

[Stuart Chase]