1 - Users have been trained by Apple and Google to expect endless upgrades for $2. When I grew up, Eudora, an email client, retailed for $100-ish, with an incremental $50 for ugprades every couple years. You can make a living on the latter pricing, but require hugely popular software for the former.
1a - as software has moved to mobile devices and web, the OS updates more often. ios does annual releases, android does the same, and chrome has a 6-week-ish update cycle. There's simply more thrashing, and it's no longer good enough to ship to a copy of Windows that updates every 4 years.
2 - There is a lot less end-user only software that just runs on a users device. It's far more common for software to require running servers to provide part of the service, and/or to code against apis that regularly change and require ongoing updates.
I'm aware no eng is owed a living, but if they can't make a living, the software becomes unavailable: either not written or not maintained.
see eg Sketch's rationale for not building an ipad app. https://www.designernews.co/comments/173706 quoted in case the link disappears:
> We don't have plans for an iPad pro version at the moment. Yes, it has a beautiful screen, but there's more to consider, such as how to adapt the UI for touch without compromising the experience.
>But the biggest problem is the platform. Apps on iOS sell for unsustainably low prices due to the lack of trials. We cannot port Sketch to the iPad if we have no reasonable expectation of earning back on our investment. Maintaining an application on two different platforms and provide one of them for a 10th of it's value won't work, and iPad volumes are low enough to disqualify the "make it up in volume" argument.
> the effect of a steady revenue stream on any business cannot be dismissed
Really? The effect of a steady revenue stream on any consumers can't be dismissed either, so how about we have those businesses pay us first? Then we can pay them back for their software. Is this how logic works? An effect can't be dismissed, therefore everyone else must dance to produce that effect?
So the logic behind "this model is objectively bad and means life or death for a company" was "well, it's a free country, so if you don't like it, go somewhere else"?
Specifically, I did not say that the subscription model is the only way to make money or stay in business. You're needlessly polarizing the issue and at this point, I'm gonna have to set the troll flag on you, and this conversation has stopped being productive. Bye.
In contrast, I can easily name dozens of companies in other fields that have been around for 50 years or more, including some small ones that have stayed small yet successful.
Adobe (1982), Intuit (1983), Electronic Arts (1982), Activision (1979), Symantec (1982), McAfee (1987)
Nintendo should probably be on that list with EA & Activision as well. The only reason they still exist is due to their consumer software business. They've shipped an enormous amount of consumer software.
Microsoft hasn't been a pure-play software company in a very long time. So I would also include Apple and IBM on that list, as both have shipped huge volumes of consumer software at various points (Apple is both still alive and still ships consumer software; IBM still exists, but no longer ships consumer software).
Just down the road from me is Frontier, which was founded by David Braben. He was working on the original Elite back in the early 80s, and although Frontier didn't come along until a decade or so later and doesn't strictly meet your condition, I'd argue that it's a good example of a successful consumer software business and has got there by producing a sustained track record of successful products. A few years ago it was listed on the stock market, but by then it had already managed almost two decades as an independent and grown to hundreds of people.
Others have, but Microsoft always been primarily B2B/Enterprise, not primarily consumer.
For that kind of company from the 1980s or earlier, MicroFocus.
> In contrast, I can easily name dozens of companies in other fields that have been around for 50 years or more
In any one field, though? And one as young as software?
Lugaru Software [1] (Epsilon Editor) has been around since 1984
There are more but...
Oh come on. Companies have been in business selling stuff for the longest time. It wasn't exactly wrecking capitalism before subscriptions became the normality in the last decade.