"splitting of packages" is NOT a trend, believe me. Just the opposite - actually head-end marketing in software these days is going for larger bundles - see Adobe CS-6 Suite for the most powerful bundle ever presented and it is most current.

There is even a trend for software vendor owners to begin offering bundles of their unrelated individual offerings at bundled prices. The reason - the economy stupid. Sales are slow, and this is seen as a way to bring some money into company coffers while giving the customer even more value in a buyer's marketplace.

The reason that SCS is offering a DIVORCE in the Vegas 12 Edit Creative Suite is because they can make exactly the same dollars on the "Edit" version while increasing their price on a continued offering of the bundle. They really don't see DVD Architect development progressing any farther - it as product category could be dead by end of 2013. THIS is a market strategy carefully tailored to what they believe their prime customer to be - the web producer.

Bundles
Well Adobe is overpriced even in this economy. Their biggest “bundle” problem is maintaining a large enough differentiation between products. Slowly InDesign has acquired some of the tasks once only possible in Illustrator and Photoshop. Their saviour for InDesign (at least for the next upgrade) is digital publishing. Plus once HTML5 has a big enough user base Flash may come under siege, plus I have seen no sign of Apple supporting swf.

"Screen layout should be user variable. Sliders for dark / light.

Paul."

I agree. That's what I liked about the newer versions of Premiere. Seems they had 50 shades between light grey and dark grey to choose from. I like medium grey myself. Not too light, not too dark.

videoitguy, I don't think so. DVDA could go a lot further (not farther - that is grammatically incorrect) There is 64 bit & more options like Encore.

Software splitting is a trend regardless of what you think or write. Many software companies are splitting software or taking the same software & locking out features & calling it something else. If you can't smell the software coffee so to speak that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Any casual observer can note the trend in splitting software. I'm surprised you can't. If you have not noted it by now my post will probably not change your mind.

It's not even a "divorce" as he mentions, since the bundled package of Vegas & DVDA is still available too.

"DVDA could go a lot further (not farther - that is grammatically incorrect)"

"Farther" is the comparative of "far", so I don't see it to be incorrect. (They have gone far but could go farther).

"Further" was originally the comparative of "forth" but has now largely replaced "farther" in general use. (See the Macquarie dictionary.)

CyberLink is another company going the bundling route. PowerDirector is now available in the Ultimate Suite with some other utilities as well as separately. You can also get the Creative Director Family with nine members!