Adobe: Upgrade Policy About Face

 Late last year Adobe announced that they were changing their upgrade pricing policy which offered a reduced price for current users of older versions of their products. They had allowed users who were within a couple of older versions a special upgrade price to their newly released products. Currently you can receive a reduced upgrade price for Photoshop (PS) CS5 if you have a license copy of PS CS2 or newer. Their new policy would only offer a discount price to users who were using the current version of their creative suite applications (versions CS5 or CS5.5 depending on the app).
 This caused a huge uproar in the user community and Adobe has since changed it's policy at least for the latest version CS6 to be released early this year, but going forward it appears you will need to be a user of CS6 to be entitled to a reduced price for the next version down the pipe.This change appears to be a one shot grace period for next year only, after that you'll need to stay current or pay full price when you want to upgrade.

Adobe's press updated policy:

Upgrade offer for CS3 and CS4 customers

We’re very excited about the upcoming release of Adobe® Creative Suite® 6 software and Adobe Creative Cloud™. CS6 will be a major new release of our creative desktop tools, with huge improvements for every type of creative professional. Adobe Creative Cloud will be our most comprehensive creative solution ever, giving members access to all of the CS6 desktop software plus additional services, new tools, Adobe Touch Apps, and rich community features. In addition, Creative Cloud members will receive continuous upgrades and updates to all products and services as part of their membership.

With these great new releases coming in the first half of 2012, we want to make sure our customers have plenty of time to determine which offering is best for them. Therefore, we’re pleased to announce that we will offer special introductory upgrade pricing on Creative Suite 6 to customers who own CS3 or CS4. This offer will be available from the time CS6 is released until December 31, 2012. More details on this offer, as well as any introductory offers for existing customers to move to Creative Cloud membership, will be announced when CS6 and Creative Cloud are released later this year.