Good conversation so far, I trust it'll stay that way.
My hot take....
I look at Atomos, and when I bought my Ninja V a few years ago. I was quite ignorant about recorders. You hit the Atomos Dashboard, check for the firmware updates and whatever.. and then I discovered there were a bunch of pay to play feature options. Initial reaction? You can imagine
However, a few of them I didn't need, want or honestly, even know what the hell they were.. Then the H.265 came and that was something I did want. I was quite happy to pay for it. They had spent time and resources adding a feature that probably came from customer feedback. I don't believe it's a super popular codec, but I actually I like it.
I checked for firmware updates a couple of weeks ago and the OS version 11 had hit, it's a paid upgrade. I looked at the features added and I didn't need any of them. They'll continue with any bug fixes on OS version 10. I could go buy the latest Ninja for OS11, There's just nothing at this time I need/want from the latest line. I think a Shogun is for me in the future anyway.... aging eyes!
The biggest challenge for companies will probably be releasing a fully featured product and no perceived "cripple hammer", people won't respond well to removing things and putting them behind a paywall.. New products still need to be innovative and push the envelope on features and capabilities out of the box.
Take the R3, fully featured AF system. If they came up with a way to say target sports photographer with "AI" updates, based on feedback and provide a feature set that is fully developed, I think that would be worth the price of admission if it's something you want. The wedding photographer won't care and won't buy it.
There can also be a lot of external influences that change the viability of a product.. trends, other new tech.. etc. Being able to adapt and provide a way for an existing product to meet these news demands.. that's great, but it will have to come at a cost, but that cost will be significantly less than buying a new camera.
However, if they tried to charge for say that pixel shift 400mp thing, that would not be cool. I don't think it was very well done, but there could have obviously been technical limitations with the hardware that prevented it from being better. If they go this route, they will have to develop hardware with the future in mind.
I also see a potential for it to help brand retention and to grab some revenue from people that use their cameras until they die. Product cycles are a lot longer now. Sure we're all camera dorks here, but I don't believe we're the majority.
This sort of thing could also help when a competitor launches something cool while your competing product is in the middle of its life cycle. If it's a software trick or whatever... well... here you go.. $50 and now your camera has it if you want it. I do think hardware evolution is going to move slower than software over the next 5 or whatever years.
Keep firmware updates going for minor features, bug fixes, compatibility. Put more resources into adding cool features. That comes at a cost for the company, and you should pay for it if you want it, but it has to be done well. How many times have you looked at a firmware update and installed a bunch of features you don't want, need, or care about? You install it for the bug fixes and those sorts of things. I don't think it's unreasonable to separate those things. It could also make those camera breaking firmware updates less of a thing?
It could also help Canon become better at software, there have been *cough* a few misses in the past.
Being verbose aside, if it adds value to a specific demographic of shooter and doesn't hinder the other demographics feature wise or cost wise. I think that could be a good thing. There is nothing wrong with finding new streams of revenue in a shrunken market if it's done right and makes your product better and your customers happier.
I don't believe this is coming any time soon, but I wouldn't be surprised if the new product lines are going to be capable of these sorts of future developments.
I will add.. no monthly BS... I think a lot of us are tired of that model.
