The Software Upgrade Game

Software vendors are under continual pressure to make their products better. This means that, at fairly regular intervals, they issue upgrades to their software. New purchasers get the latest and greatest when they buy. And, to spread the development costs and keep existing customers happy, vendors would like to encourage current users to acquire the latest version, too, albeit at a modest price point.

So, how do they get people to upgrade their software?

The industry is wrestling with this issue as we speak. People tend to get used to their software, and getting them to upgrade to the latest and greatest version is a bit of a problem. You have to convince them to pry open their wallets and spend some of their discretionary income to replace something that already works pretty well. Vendors have tried various mechanisms, most of them based on a subscription model; TiVo's oil change and AOL's online upgrades, for example, both depend on users paying for their software (and, implicitly, the upgrades) as part of a monthly service.

It has been noted in some parts that major software vendors have been tinkering with all sorts of pricing ideas, including subscriptions, to guarantee a steady revenue stream into the foreseeable future.

But once we get past the economic problem, we still have the quasi-technical problem: How do we make the upgrade as easy and user-friendly as possible?