Yes, although the initial invest of 280€ to have everything was a little bit painful, it is only two years of competitor subscription. Afterwards the updates are quite cheap, nearly half of a year of competitor subscription. So if you are using the toolset for 4 years while you update each year, you have reached the break even point, because the updates for FP and ViewPoint do not happen very often and are no “must haves”.
It is 4 * 120€ = 480€ vs 280€ + 3 * 69€ = 487€
This assumes that you do not need Photoshop. CaptureOne costs even more initially and on yearly basis. But yes, this is a heigh barrier for all the On1 users, which buy their complete suits for 50€ while on sale, just before the next version is released, or for people that have 10€ a month, but no 120€ a year.
Oh i don’t think it happens in the near future.
But if you see they bought NIK.(a tiff and jpeg editer)
Vp and FP are able to read and process raw, ( i think, i use almost never the standalone version. and i am not at home to test.)
So to be able to integrate the NIK set inside the interface of DPL they have to link this more to rawworkspace. This re-codeing isn’t done in few months.
Ad first they need to de-clutter or untangle the overlapping functions .
re-arange those inside the new core DPL and Filmpack-NIK. (i would keep the strong name “NIK”)
Decide the marketing strategy. option , suite , standalone sell. which needs to be inside what.
i think we would be lucky if this is happening in 2020’s V4
until then just go for all if you like or just what you need.