Quote from Desertengineer: "It looks like there are two sides here, each with what I think are critical points."

Actually, no, the company's performance is simply inexcusable - plain and simple. This reaction is occurring purely from broken promises, poor attitude, non existent functionality, and serious amounts of money spent on a poorly supported product. This does not bode well for a company in dire straights.

I had to change, yes, change motherboards to reduce, not solve my snap, crackle and explode XFi sound problems. Creative's official statement was that the motherboard manufacturer's (in this case Intel) PCI (electrical) slots are out of spec - NOT our problem. Interesting, Intel own's brand cannot make motherboards in spec? But of course, your cards are perfectly made?? The truly sad thing about this is that I resigned to only wanting basic sound, not even Dolby, DTS or proper EAX! Even that never fully materialized! Never, ever again will I purchase a Creative product. The attitude of this company, as can be seen by the red of their P&L statements, is a testament to their treatment of customers. Where's the passion and caring??

Mr. O'Shaughnessy,

I propose that Daniel_K was not distributing your IP with intent to make money, otherwise he would have sold it outright, instead of asking for donations. I do suggest that he was in fact trying to recoup expenses for a bit of time lost helping your customers, and actually adding value to the Creative brand. If he increased the sales of your cards one iota, or helped you retain even one customer, I would say he might actually have a case in sending you a bill for his time and efforts.

I can understand that Creative sees a need to increase profitability by looking for new revenue streams, and by selling new versions of products for existing product lines. I appreciate that Creative did not seek to outright sue this gentleman for his efforts, but instead asked him to cease and desist his efforts quite politely on this forum, and for that I commend you. I realize you are not the sole arbiter of decisions with regard to this company, so when I say "you" please realize I am speaking of your company as a whole.

Creatives unwritten policy seems to be forcing new products upon a user base which is perfectly happy with their existing device by limiting features or providing substandard features when the hardware itself is capable of much more, and I can no longer turn a blind eye to this behavior. I have been a loyal customer for quite a long time, from the days of your earliest audio cards to more modern recent sound cards, as well as several of your poorly supported Zen/Nomad devices. I'm quite weary of your attempts to repackage extremely similar hardware or devices as "new", or providing a small subset of features on devices that can do so much more (Zen). Like all companies who must accurately direct funds where they will be most effective in yielding profit, you probably did an analysis of "what features do we want to provide" and measured this out to the point of diminishing returns. Unfortunately, your cost-benefit analysis has clearly failed in estimating the value of reputation for fully functional devices over "new" device sales. You are well within your rights to restrict use of your IP to those revenue paths you have carefully chosen, however this decision negatively impacts your bottom line as you also restrict hardware sales.

I'm sure that this formerly great company has many ways to turn a profit. Perhaps you license this much vaunted IP to other manufacturers or let third-parties slap your name on their software products, but unless I'm mistaken, your main, core business seems to be audio hardware and devices. By limiting functionality of your devices in the hopes of perhaps "spreading out the feature set" to several grades of functionality, you allow competition to seep through these holes and fill the gaps. When a user buys a piece of hardware that can physically do X, Y, and Z, but the drivers or software for it only allow X, that breaks a covenant to the user if they find out about it. It is not "enhancing your market share" or any such nonsense when you sell an "upgraded" version because it alienates the existing customer from your brand. I do feel sorry for the Creative engineers who come up with such nice hardware, only to see the fruits of their labor chopped up and sold piecemeal to customers like so many black market body parts.

Ultimately, it comes down to this: For an existing product, open it up, give as much functionality as possible to the user, even if it costs you a little extra. Support the hardware you have on the market, and when you can no longer do so, let others support it without condition. The sales you will reap in reputation alone will far outweigh the "lost" sales you perceive from others "distributing your IP" (to get your own products working, I might add). The IP policies to which you have adhered thus far have failed you, and seriously need to be reconsidered in this age of accessible tools and user-modifiable hardware and software. To do otherwise, as has been noted elsewhere in this forum, is to see yourself relegated to the history books as another archaic business model that failed to keep up with technological trends.

Of course I don't need to tell you that you have lost yet another previously loyal customer with this final act of hubris.

Congrats on getting picked up on Wired and having broke 1000 plus specific hits on google search.

How long until this thread gets deleted and Creative pretends this never happened?

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HellasVagabond wrote:

This thread - although it voices opinions of many people ( Or at least so it would seem ) - has become quite the spam thread.

Can we please keep the replies about their message to Daniel_K and NOT about wether or not one will buy Creative products again ?

Seeing the same thing beeing said by 200 people aint gonna change a thing but it will bring quite a headaque to those who will come to read this thread. Make no mistake people, Creative has contracts with companies that make computers and they sell millions of units, they are not going to care about 200-2000-20000 customers who may stop buying their products although in the end only a handfull will follow that threat and do it.

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Damnit Creative, wtf happened to you? You're screwing people over, and you STILL DON'T HAVE USABLE LINUX DRIVERS FOR THE X-FI OR PUBLISHED DOCS. I can't wait for your company to be killed by on-board sound, seeing as there's essentially no difference anymore now that motherboard makers do multichannel and no one uses EAX. You've become corrupt, useless, and hated. Die.

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palewook wrote:

How long until this thread gets deleted and Creative pretends this never happened?

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Are you people stupid or insane? Just asking the question. If creative products don't work on vista... stop buying them. End of story. For those that are too late in getting a refund, drop it already. It's a loss! Write it off and move on. Eventually, you'll have to upgrade yor PC, so consider it an upgrade.

And threatening or mocking Creative won't work either. If Creative knew something that would increase their slumping sales, they wouldn't fall for it either. It's a business decision. Put it this way... you can lead the donkey to the pond but you can't make him drink.

So stop complaining and take your rant and business elsewhere because trust me... you are wasting your time otherwise. But I wasn't always that smart until Catherine (mod) filled me in. Very smart girl I might add. Because you always think that the mods are against you... always enforcing Creative's policies - but she was brilliant and made me see the light.

Just an observation. It appears Creative has no real CEO or leader... because look at it - there's no leadership or direction with the company. And that's probably why the company isn't going anywhere. Just an observation. I'm not asking because if I were, they'd tell me it's a business decision and none of my business.

if anybody would like to call him

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Phil O'Shaughnessy
Creative Labs, Inc.
poshaughnessy@creativelabs.com
(408) 546-6773