Could the Weapon Upgrade plan evolve

[Tarquin Cardona]

I found the Raven announcement totally caught me by surprise. And I think that one can tell that the combination of red imaging tech, the form factor and the 'bring a gun to a knife fight' pricing has been a big hit. Certainly appears so.

One of the sidebar observations one can make is that Raven will by the numbers move a lot of Weapon accessories. Which is great for Red.

I know though that there are also a lot of Red Users with Epic and Scarlet Dragons who feel that right now they fall somewhere between a Raven and the much steeper Weapon pricing. Also if one reads between the lines from RedHQ there is stuff in the pipeline for this group.

One of the things I noted with the Raven roll out was the simple way the Raven was offered in three tiers of packages. Base. And then two accessory levels. There was even the offer that RU could try to devise even a fourth package themselves.

I wonder, as things evolve and grow, is it possible that the same tiered mindset could be applied to say the Weapon MG for example? That Red could be choose to offer that with the same spread of offerings. Thereby allowing people to bring in the AKS level they need to manage cost.

This has maybe already been suggested. But it feels like a possible low hanging way to bring more people in as the Raven has been such a boost to accessory biz.

 

[Brian Merlen]

supposedly both dragon and scarlet dragon have an upgrade path according to a cryptic hint somewhere in the 200 page raven announcement thread... they are not "EOL" but the fact that its even a concern for a lot of people is the issue since they won't share whats in store for the mid range users...some users may go to other categories too like weapon or raven anyway now if there are going to be eventually 3 different categories and a mid ranged price point one just hasn't been shown yet. or is MG supposed to be the mid range option thats the question? i think a lot of people just dont know what to do at the moment until red makes it clearer what the way forward is for all the scarlet dragon/dragon shooters who can't afford weapon, i mean raven doesn't even have a trade program so something surely will be worked out eventually. as to how good the mid range options may be, who knows...i think a lot of people are trying to justify weapon and its not that its features aren't amazing its just that i think owner ops worry on who will monetize the difference in costs when the producers have no clue what auto blackshade is and will not notice cleaner low ends for the most part... the prores workflow just hurts media managers/DITs in that no longer can charge for encodes unless we rocket x up some MXF or something else... so depends where you are in the crew sheet, and whether you already have equipment these feature sets replace...like id love to do some DPX or DNXHD on my rocket x but how many productions will just take the prores or shoot too fast to do prores simultaneously? i think all this hinges on how many people are willing to pay for premium CF weapons in the first place vs the much cheaper price points lots of us were comfortable with...

 

[Tarquin Cardona]

I think a lot of what you say is right. My question though was prompted by the way Raven was rolled out versus say the Magnesium Weapon. For me if the offering had been done the same way where a base Mg brain, sad, and mount was offered, along with some package options of different kinds - it would have definitely been a draw (for me certainly) and I think a lot easier to understand. I was wondering if that might be something Red would consider as an approach now that the Raven roll out has been so well received.