[UPDATE (April 23rd) – Creative Suite 6 is unveiled! Learn when it will ship.]
The wait is over, the date is set! After months of hints and “sneak peeks”, Adobe has just confirmed they will be officially launching Creative Suite 6 on Monday, April 23rd, 2012…
This lines up well with our earlier forecast for the announce date – and we continue to expect the shipping date to come in early May, as suggested by the current CS6 Grace Period Offer.
The Creative Suite 6 Launch Event will be webcast worldwide on Monday at 10am PT / 1pm ET and 5pm GMT – and naturally it will be recorded so you can watch the video on demand thereafter.
Naturally there are a lot of details left to unfold but here are some of the earliest… Be sure to tune in here:
And the invitation itself:
Join us for a live webcast April 23 at 10am Pacific Time (see the hour in your timezone) to hear how Adobe is reinventing the creative process and be the first to experience the latest innovations within Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Creative Suite 6.
Importantly, this means time is running out to take advantage of the money-saving grace period for a free CS6 upgrade when you buy CS5.5 now – because as soon as CS6 is released, Adobe will stop selling Creative Suite 5… and it’s very likely to be less expensive to upgrade to CS5.5 now (with CS6 gratis) than up to CS6 later.
It’s also the last chance for anybody still running CS2 to upgrade, due to Adobe’s “three versions back” limit! For owners of CS3 and CS4, the recent upgrade policy changes mean that you have only until the end of 2012 to receive discounted upgrade pricing to CS6, and after that it will be full price to anybody not on CS5.
For some punch, the launch trailer:
Can’t wait till next week? No problem – you can download the Photoshop CS6 beta release now, or enter to win Photoshop for free…
Also check out these resources:
— Adobe: CS6 on Track for “Late in Q2” with Very Compelling New Features
— Sneak Previews of CS6: Dreamweaver, InDesign, Flash Pro, Illustrator & Premiere
— Revealed! What’s New in CS6 for Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Audition
— First Look: The Adobe CS6 Production Premium Suite
— What’s the Difference Between Photoshop CS6 vs. CS5 – What’s New in Features?
We’ll have a lot more coverage of the Creative Suite 6 rollout right here as we progress to the launch date, and beyond…
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Yay !
Fantastic !!! Does this mean everything incl. all Suites?
Yes Adam, everything – all tools, all suites! All CS6 software will be unveiled during this event.
Will I be able to watch the event at a later date? Also does that mean that I can download the trial on the 23rd of April?
Hello again Daniel, thanks for the good questions. Yes, the launch event will be viewable on-demand starting the next day at Adobe TV… So not to worry if you miss the live broadcast as you can still catch the video there.
The trials are not likely to be available at the same time as the launch. Typically Adobe unveils all the applications and new features, and then 2-3 weeks later the software is available for download and shipping. We’ll have all that news here as it happens.
But if you want to download a great Creative Suite 6 product today, try the free Photoshop CS6 beta!
Posting again to set the “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail” setting, BTW, can you guys make that a default setting?
Thanks, that’s worth some consideration… There is another camp that generally prefers the option to be off by default, so it’s something to think about!
Did you make mistake in this line: because as soon as CS6 is unveiled, Adobe will stop selling Creative Suite 5; what are they going to sell till May?
Hey there Bojan, good to see you again and thank you for your comment. If it works like it has in past releases, then next week all product and store pages that you see now for CS5 on Adobe’s site will suddenly be gone – they will transition everything over to CS6 and start preorders, and no longer offer the CS5 trial downloads etc… We’ll clarify that a bit in the text above.
What will be the price for these upgrades?
Hi Harold, we don’t know the pricing for Creative Suite 6 as Adobe has not announced it yet, and they probably won’t until the launch. However, it hasn’t changed much over recent years so your best estimates would be to take the prices now for full copies of CS5/CS5.5 – or if you own an older product and are upgrading, then use the cost of a similar move now.
One upgrade fact you can be sure of though – especially if you have a suite – is that CS6 will cost more later than it will now if you take advantage of the current Grace Period Program…
Sweet! It’s been a long month when it comes to waiting for CS6… CS5 was launched on April 12, 2010, and CS5.5 information went live on April 11, 2011. This year the launch is a bit late.
Now that we know about one side of the suite (CS6 Production Premium), I can’t wait to see the other programs (and not to mention actually trying them out).
And thanks for the heads-up! The launch page is next to impossible to find from Adobe’s home page.
Greetings YL – you’re absolutely right on everything (as usual), including all the dates! Great to see you again and looking forward to next week.
PS – By the way, Adobe’s CEO actually gave the reason why the launch would be later than those for CS5 – he said it was in order to line up simultaneous releases in all major geographies, plus they’re also offering the Creative Cloud this time as an option.
It’s not clear to me if I skip upgrading Ai CS5 to CS6 now, when Ai CS7 comes out I’ll have to pay the full price? This is the new upgrade policy?
That’s a good question. Based on what we know about Adobe’s Upgrade Policy changes, the answer would be yes – you’d have to pay full price for CS7 if you skipped CS6.
For the remainder of 2012, current owners of CS3, CS4, and CS5 can get upgrade pricing to CS6. Starting in 2013, only owners of CS5 can.
For CS7, when it comes out in two years, presumably it will be the same policy – meaning only current owners of CS6 would be able to get a discounted upgrade to CS7 at that time.
Hope this helps.
Hmm, not cool…
(thanks for answering)
Will the student discounts be available on CS6?
Welcome Lynn, thanks for your question. There has been no news on this yet so we can’t know for sure on either the existence or pricing of CS6 student editions…
For a more details on this, please see these comments from Moe and the response.
@B77
You are correct about the upgrade thingy. And yes it’s kind of sucks.
BUT you still can (at least most likely) upgrade straight from CS5 to CS7, with upgrade pricing.
Just use your CS5 until CS7 is about to be released (in 2 years from now I would guess) and then upgrade to CS6.5 (which is still allowed within the new upgrade rules) when the grace period starts.
Then you’ll get CS7 for free when it’s released, which is kind of the same thing as upgrading to it.
Of course, if Adobe stops offering the grace period in the future, this won’t work, but that’s unlikely to happen.
Hi Rinne, thanks for your thoughts. What you describe down the road may be possible, but it’s a long way from a sure thing… Just as Adobe is making the CS Upgrade Policy more limited, we think the grace period will also be on the way out.
One reason is because the time between announce and release dates at Adobe is always getting shorter – it used to be 4-5 weeks, then 3-4, and now with CS6 it will probably be only 1-2 weeks. Other products like Lightroom and Elements already launch and ship worldwide on the same day, with immediate availability. Nobody wants to wait anymore, customers want to have the software right away. And with the introduction of the Creative Cloud option, Adobe is trying to get program updates out there even quicker.
What’s more, the grace period looks to be a headache for the company both logistically and expense-wise… They would probably rather not have to deal with it, and make it simpler for everyone by just releasing the software the same day they announce it. That way it’s cleaner and they don’t have to send out these free upgrades, which would otherwise be paid for them.
So it would be great if you could do that, but two years is a long time until CS7 – and if the grace period goes away by then (as we think it will), then that strategy won’t work.
Yep, you might be right. We just have to wait and see.
At least he/she (B77) can still upgrade to CS6.5 in case what you say happens.
I just feel that Adobe has to lower their upgrade prices to get people to upgrade every year (or every other year). Many people I know used to upgrade every 4-5 years, mostly because of the costs.
If Adobe sticks with the current pricing in the long run, it might lose many customers. I mean they wouldn’t change programs, but just stick with whatever they have as long as they possibly can.
Anyway…you never know with Adobe. They might go cloud-only in the next few years. We’ll have to wait and see.
Ps. Very excited with CS6. Already waiting for my free upgrade.. :)
Well, Adobe says they are definitely not going ‘cloud-only’ anytime soon, but that they are introducing the Creative Cloud as another option.
The idea with the change in the upgrade policy was probably designed to bring more people towards the monthly cloud rental program, but the company found a bit of pushback on that so they postponed the changes until the end of the year.
We were curious what customers thought of the new Cloud option so we ran a poll – and the numbers came out 85% against… So it seems unlikely the traditional perpetual/permanent licenses would go away.
If I have CS5, should the price be the same to upgrade to CS6 as it is to upgrade to CS5.5 now? Just trying to determine if I should upgrade to CS5.5 and then get the free CS6 upgrade. I’d rather just upgrade to CS6.
That’s quite an important and timely question actually… Upgrading now will very likely save you money instead of waiting – and you can read all about why here.
Hope that helps – and hurry, as the offer expires soon!
I cant wait