Well it could have been Traktor and gone completely to sleep for about two-three years right after launching the S5/S8 hardware, making everyone wonder if they’d completely pulled out of the market. (admittedly, Traktor did have more evolved software to sleep on)
Yes, when an essential platform that you have serious $$$ invested in goes quiet and vague for so long, it’s incredibly frustrating and it’s only natural to expect big things when they do finally release something.
I’m rooting for Denon’s every success because of the good design decisions and innovations they’ve made. What frustrates me isn’t so much a blind sense of entitlement but concern they are fumbling the ball at a critical time and this great hardware isn’t going to fulfil it’s true potential until the window of opportunity has passed (for both them and me!)
The optimist in me says: The Spring Update is a good start and hopefully step one on a new roadmap, turning over a new leaf of development and community communication. The mention of a Summer update already suggests a move to quarterly updates for feature releases (probably with a few minor bug fixes in the mean time)
From what I’ve seen, they’ve acknowledged BPM detection is an issue they are taking it seriously. This is the biggest, low hanging fruit and, hopefully, after all the criticism and all the time it’s taking, it’ll be great rather than passable. It does need to come pretty swiftly.
The resource-hogging wizz-bang sizzle features are interesting and exciting but they need to always keep a good eye on the basic quality of life stuff when it comes to core features. Otherwise it’s a house built on sand.
By the time we see the results of what I assume will be the summer update, the new NZ development team will be more settled in their new role, more familiar with the code and hopefully more productive.
Fingers crossed the Prime 4 sells wonderfully and Denon can justify throwing good money at even more talented team members that will enrich the entire ecosystem for all of us.
I understand the reasons for keeping tight lipped in a cutthroat competitive industry and the difficulty of setting expectations when dealing with ever-shifting projects but community communication is really key.
I’d love to see a broader beta program open up for those of us eager to get our hands dirty.