Microsoft’s Office LTSC 2024 is a full-circle moment for PC programs and online subscriptions

Subscription fatigue is a real problem, and it may be the case that parts of the tech industry are finally starting to react to it. Three years on from its last perpetual Office license, Microsoft has released Office 2024 LTSC for general-purpose consumers. While Microsoft is quick to remind you that they believe a 365 subscription is better, the fact of the matter is that many people don’t want to pay a subscription, and a perpetual Office license offers exactly that.

However, what’s especially interesting about this release is that Microsoft has long been rumored to be toying with the idea of killing off perpetual Office licenses, forcing consumers to only use Microsoft 365. It became such a hot-topic issue that Microsoft said in its FAQ for Office 2019 that it still intended to release “on-premises” (perpetual) packages beyond Office 2019, saying the following:

Moving to the cloud is a journey with many considerations along the way. Therefore, we remain committed to on-premises customers and plan to do additional releases post Office 2019.

Given the rumor cycle that had built up to that point, many took this to mean that Office 2021 might be the last version, though againMicrosoft confirmed that there would be another perpetual license of Office in the future. Microsoft has not yet released an Office 2024 FAQ confirming a further commitment, but at this stage, it seems pretty clear that Microsoft is releasing its Office suite every few years so that when the five-year support window ends, users can upgrade to the next version.

With that said, you would think a complete switch to the cloud would benefit Microsoft, but given that Microsoft originally said in 2019 that “moving to the cloud is a journey with many considerations along the way,” it certainly sounds like switching to a subscription model was somewhere in the far future’s pipeline. It doesn’t seem like it’s an option anymore though, so what happened?

Consumers are moving away from subscriptions

The cost of subscriptions adds up

How many subscriptions do you pay a month? Probably quite a few, right? Companies have successfully normalized monthly payments that, in the long run, make them significantly more money than one-off payments, but that comes at a price. When companies are competing for your monthly expenditure all of the time, eventually, consumers will break. This is called subscription fatigue.

Plenty of applications have changed to a subscription model rather than an outright purchase, and Adobe’s Creative Suite is probably one of the most famous examples. While you used to be able to buy Photoshop, you can now only buy it as a monthly or annual subscription with Adobe. The company even mentions this on the page where you purchase Photoshop, where a FAQ at the bottom of the page says that you can’t buy Photoshop outright anymore.

In response, we’ve seen the rise of Photoshop alternatives that have grown a huge amount in recent years, the most famous of which is Affinity Photo. While a subscription is cheap month to month and an outright purchase is more expensive, people have become more savvy to the fact that in the long run, they’ll spend less overall by buying it outright. On top of that, having less active monthly expenses is easier to budget around.

Simiarly, DaVinci Resolve is another application that his risen to prominence in the face of Adobe’s subscription fee for Premiere Pro. While it’s a free application at its heart, you can pay a one-time fee for the studio version if you need it, and it has pretty much all of the features Premiere Pro has. DaVinci Resolve is a fully capable program too, being used by many studios in creation of some blockbuster movies, with a recent example being that it was used for greenscreen/bluescreen and on-set work for Deadpool 2.

With that, Microsoft’s Office LTSC 2024 release seems to be partially in recognition of how many subscriptions people pay month to month. While Microsoft was always going to release an “on-premises” version of Office, there’s a reason the company still does it in the first place, and as already mentioned, it’s not just Microsoft either that realizes the value in true ownership.

As already mentioned, streaming services even play a part too. Well-decorated director Christopher Nolan, director of movies like Interstellar, the Batman trilogy, and Oppenheimer recently encouraging fans to purchase Blu-Ray versions of their favorite movies, stating the following in an interview with The Washington Post.

“There is a danger these days that if things only exist in the streaming version, they do get taken down. They come and go – as do broadcast versions of films, so my films will play on HBO or whatever, they’ll come and go. But the home video version is the thing that can always be there, so people can always access it.”

While DVD sales are generally falling, those comments from Nolan along with increasing awareness of the ephemeral nature of streaming services led to Oppenheimer selling out in its first week of DVD sales, with Universal Studios stating that they were working to replenish stock as quickly as possible. Sure, you can pay a streaming service a monthly fee, but why not just buy what you want outright and get exactly what you want? That logic is beginning to hold true for more and more people in the software space as well.

Microsoft’s Office LTSC 2024 might set off a chain reaction

it’s pretty clear something has to change

I think with a rising cost of living and the capable nature of alternatives to subscription services, it seems pretty clear that there will be a shift of sorts. People don’t mind paying subscriptions, but people don’t want to pay too many subscriptions. There’s already talks of some streaming services merging, which seems to signal that things may already beginning to turn. Software subscriptions aren’t going away, but depending on how successful Microsoft’s Office release is, it may signal to those across the wider industry that outright ownership is more interesting to consumers at this time than a subscription is.

As it stands, unless you really need the paid subscription versions, the free and outright paid alternatives to Photoshop, Premiere, and other services are just as good, and don’t require a subscription. While Microsoft seems to be somewhat dialled in on this issue, it may come to pass that other companies finally get the memo, too.