Contrary to what the community speculates, Maschine+ is not dead, and the 3.0 update with Kontakt 8 support and more is on the horizon.
At NAMM 2025, Native Instruments announced an official partnership with Akai Pro, focusing on bringing sound content to the MPC ecosystem and NKS support for their MIDI controllers. At the same time, the beat production community began to speculate whether this could be the end for the Maschine+ (Plus) after there had been no update for a long time.
Native Instruments responded to this speculation in a 2025 outlook article and announced the “update” roadmap for the Maschine+ in 2025. So, the Machine+ is not dead.
Maschine+ 3.0 Update Roadmap
The best news is that the Maschine+ is still being developed, and updates will come. So it won’t be dead, as many have speculated in various forums and on social media.
According to Native Instruments, they will publish updates for the Maschine Plus in two steps. In Q1 2025, they will publish an update for Maschine+’s current Maschine 2 software on Maschine+ that focuses on stability and critical bugs.
This also includes a kernel upgrade that allows changing the sampling rate and buffer size for extended compatibility with USB class-compliant audio interfaces.
On top of that, they will add several effects from their desktop portfolio. Users with a plugin license can also use them for free on Maschine+. It’s unknown exactly what effects these will be.
I’m speculating that would be the Cruch and Mod Packs plugins. It would also be nice to see Replika XT as part of Maschine+. These new effects will go into beta within the next week, and an official release is planned for Q1 2025.
Maschine+ 3.0 + Kontakt 8
Native Instruments says bringing Maschine+ to 3.0 update is a top priority and is planned for Q2 2025 in their update road. A big highlight of this upcoming update will be Kontakt 8 support.
This allows Kontakt instruments to be loaded into the Maschine+, which will be a pretty big step soundwise for NI’s standalone groovebox. They have already confirmed they will bring a selection of full Kontakt instruments, including the Play Series, to Maschine+.
The limits will have to be seen during testing. I’m not sure, but I think an orchestral library of 200GB will be a bit challenging, especially with the amount of data.
Another major new feature will be the highly requested bounce-to-audio feature. Maschine+’s CPU is not the strongest or most modern. Thus, you can bounce CPU-heavy instruments into audio and use them more in your tracks.
They are also evaluating whether the STEM separation feature of Maschine 3 will be available on the standalone. Since this function is complex and CPU-heavy, they must give it more tests before implementing it. However, the stems created with the 3.0 software will be supported in the hardware.
First Impression
Maschine+ continues to thrive, which is great news. I’m pleased that OS updates are in progress and that additional instruments and effects from the NI catalog will be featured in upcoming releases. I’m eager to find out how it integrates with the CPU.
It’s a shame that no efforts are being made to improve the Maschine sequencer and add new, modern features like probability, mutation, etc. Since we have the first third-party Reaktor instrument for Maschine+, I hope NI will include this to its full extent in a 2025 update.
The new Native Instruments Maschine+ 2.0 and 3.0 updates will be available in Q1 and Q2 2025. Maschine+ is available now for 879€ on Thomann or 704,89€ as a certified b-stock at the official NI Reverb shop.
More information here: Native Instruments / NI Community
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I like Maschine, and it was. great creativity boosting superb workflow tool.
but since selling, NI is really focussed on projects that directly generate revenues – more Play instruments, selling to Akai users etc. Maschine updates don’t drive more revenue (unless they sell more Maschine+) so are just not a high priority.