Microsoft Discontinues Expression Suite Development, Expression Design 4 and Web 4 Made Available For Free

Microsoft today announced that they are ceasing the development of Expression Suite.

Expression Studio Ultimate included the following programs,

• Expression Web, HTML editor and web design program
• Expression Design, vector graphics editor
• Expression Encoder Pro, Video editing tool for authoring VC-1 and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC contents
• Expression Blend, graphical user interface builder for XAML or HTML applications
• SuperPreview, complementary web design program for testing compatibility and performance
•  SketchFlow, complementary user interface tool that facilitate workflow design

Microsoft will no longer develop any of these products and Expression brand will be discontinued. Here is the announcement from Microsoft.

• Blend will be fully integrated with Visual Studio 2012. Blend for Visual Studio 2012 provides a rich design-centric environment for building Windows Store apps and Windows Phone apps. In addition to that, WPF, Silverlight and SketchFlow support is available today as a preview and will be released in Visual Studio 2012 Update 2.
• Blend will continue to ship as a standalone tool with Visual Studio 2012, as part of a consolidated designer/developer offering. Blend for Visual Studio 2012 provides a rich design-centric environment for building Windows Store apps and Windows Phone apps. In addition to that, WPF, Silverlight and SketchFlow support is available today as a preview and will be released in Visual Studio 2012 Update 2.
• Expression Studio 4 Ultimate and Expression Studio 4 Web Professional are no longer available for sale. For customers who previously purchased these products, all components within Ultimate and Web Professional will be supported through their support lifecycle.
• Expression Design 4 and Expression Web 4 are now available for download at no charge.  Technical support will not be available for these free versions.
• Expression Encoder 4 Pro will be available for purchase through 2013. Expression Encoder 4 remains available for download at no charge.

I think its time for Microsoft to buy Adobe for their designer and developer tools. Adobe’s market capital is around $18 billion with $4 billion yearly revenue. I think Adobe will bring more value to Microsoft than Skype did.

Update: Microsoft reached out to us to clarify their statement about Expression Blend’s future. I’ve updated the post above with their statement.

Source: Microsoft