This is true, but I think people have forgotten just how expensive software was a generation ago. Photoshop in the pre-Cloud days was a $600+ program depending on where you got it, with upgrade pricing in the $150–200 range. Today, you can get a "Photography" Creative Cloud subscription with Photoshop and Lightroom for $120/year.

I'm not in love with "everything is SaaS," but I recognize that a lot of software businesses really want recurring revenue rather than a rush of orders -- many of which are lower-priced upgrades -- when new releases come out, then a trickle until the next for-pay release (which a subset of your existing customers won't upgrade to). And, in an era where a lot of people have come to see upfront prices of $99+ for applications as outrageously high -- and worse, have been trained by app stores to expect free upgrades indefinitely -- the old model may just not be sustainable.

> rather another way to extract more money from customers

This is just cynical!