As referenced in our previous article about CS5 shipping timeframes, Adobe’s top dog gave a presentation last week to financial analysts in which he talked about Creative Suite 5. He said some interesting things, but as most regular folks and creatives don’t often read financial transcripts, here are the highlights:
We are excited about the upcoming launch of CS5. It will be a phenomenal release, rich with innovative “wow” features, new products and integrated workflows. It will enable an even broader set of designers and developers to more effectively create deliver and measure engaging experiences across media and devices. We’re hosting a global online event to launch CS5, which is on track to ship in major languages [English, French, German and Japanese] late in Q2. [Ed. note – Adobe’s fiscal second quarter ends in late May.]
It’s clear the trends continue to be in favor of what we’ve been doing which is to enable our customers to offer once and deliver across multiple media types and the amount of digital content that we see created continues to increase, and frankly it continues to be richer – so more video, more use of animation and interactivity.
Our need is to enable our customers to have one workflow rather than multiple stovepipe workflows. So with that backdrop, we recognize that creative pros and companies are facing unprecedented challenges frankly, which is how can they deliver this engaging consistent brand experience across many devices.
We now think that our solution, the combination of Creative Suite with Omniture as well as with Flash Player 10.1, really provides a comprehensive approach to enable them to do that. That coupled with the strengthened economy and the innovation we’ve done in CS5, gives us a lot of confidence for the remainder of the year, but also frankly for the entire duration of the CS5 release.
Since it’s probably going to get asked, let me give you a few factors about what is in CS5. I think the big themes for us are first, the ability to design without boundaries, and that comes both from new products we’re introducing in CS5 like Flash Catalyst. Everything we’ve done with InDesign where you can now use InDesign content and repurpose that for electronic delivery without writing a single line of code, what we’ve done in Photoshop including support for 3D capabilities.
The second theme is really all about working faster with greater precision and this is support for new formats, HD for example, as well as what we’ve done with the new Mercury Engine and our video product which allows people to render video using hardware acceleration as well as native 64-bit support.
And finally, services – we’ve talked about the desire to extend our desktop functionality with services. You’ll see that with CS Live. So all of that points to a solid release and we’re excited. You’ll learn a lot more about what’s in the products and pricing at the launch event.