I think Adobe have shot themselves in the foot recently and they are looking for a way out.
None of the photographers I know are willing to pay £££ for photoshop anymore, so we don't. I have CS3 and it is fine for what I do with it. Every (and I mean every) professional photographer has Lightroom as part of their workflow now, it does 99% of the work I do to my pictures and it's an application that costs around £100.
I think their subscription model is a good one to be honest, I think it's a little over priced at the moment, I'l like to see it at regular price of around £30 per month and then I would bite.
Adobe software has always been widely pirated mainly due to cost, I think this subscription model could actually help Adobe with that problem, time will tell...
Cheers
Cris