MAGIX Software, German developer of media production software such as Fastcut, Music Maker and Xara Photo & Graphic Designer, today announced its acquisition of the majority of products in the Sony Creative Software portfolio. These include Vegas Pro, Movie Studio, Sound Forge Pro and ACID Pro. Sony Creative Software will continue to develop their recently introduced Catalyst Browse, Edit and Prepare post-production software.

“These products from Sony Creative Software are the perfect addition to our portfolio … This autumn, we plan to release new versions of the video-editing programs Vegas Pro and Movie Studio, which are heavily oriented toward the customer requirements of today,” says MAGIX CEO Klaus Schmidt.

In addition to the upgrades, MAGIX also promises to support all current users of the Sony Creative Software products being acquired, but there is certainly potential for negative reactions from loyal Sony Vegas editors adverse to this change in ownership.

When Catalyst Edit was first announced at NAB 2015, it caused concern among Sony users that the familiar and much loved Vegas Pro editing platform would be abandoned. Catalyst is billed as a completely new solution for fast and focused editing — a lean yet robust platform built for editing 4K and Sony RAW formats. As one Sony Creative Software team member explained, without the technical debt of the older Vegas Pro platform, the Catalyst Production Suite is better equipped support modern cameras and workflows.

Despite positioning Catalyst as the modern answer to Vegas Pro, Sony denied rumors that the Catalyst Production Suite would replace their existing offering and insisted that the new platform would simply complement a different workflow. At the time of its release, there were no public plans for the Catalyst suite to replace Vegas Pro.

While not exactly abandoning Vegas Pro, this sale indicates Sony is going all in on development of the Catalyst platform. At the same time, Vegas Pro is left with an uncertain future in the hands of a lesser-known developer who likely has some work ahead to earn the trust of existing Vegas Pro editors.