Office 2016 -- Buy Now only links to Office 365 (subscription)

Yeah, for those that don't want a subscription, I believe the Home and Business version is priced at $229.

alphanumeric said:

I have no interest in Office 365. I should get keys for the full license Pro version on MSDN. Eventually.

For most people, they don't have access to MSDN. It's very expensive. To get Office products, you need the Visual Studio Enterprise with MSDN and that is $5,999 for a new subscription.
Compare subscription benefits | Visual Studio

I used to have the Visual Studio Premium (Premium is no longer offered) account from work. However, when we renewed we dropped to Visual Studio Pro as that was $1,200 a year, rather than $6,000 a year. But it doesn't include Office, Exchange, Sharepoint, etc. For those apps, I just use the 180 day evals from Technet now.

bro67 said:

Office 2016 requires a Office 365 subscription.

No, it doesn't require an Office 365 subscription.

You can still buy standalone versions of Home and Student, Home and Business and Professional.
Choose Microsoft Office Products

bro67 said:

It is not going to go well with the consumers when they go to install it and find out that they have to pay a monthly membership.

People need to think for a few seconds before they have a kneejerk reaction and cry foul.

Using that link above that I posted, we can see offerings and prices

Office Home and Student 2016 is $149.99 for 1 install. You only get Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote
Office Home and Business 2016 is $229.99 for 1 install. In addition to the above, you get Outlook
Office 2016 Professional 2016 is $399.99 for 1 install. In addition to everything above, you also get Publisher and Access.

So, if you need 2 copies of Office that include Outlook, you would need to spend $229.99 x 2 or $459.98 if you bought standalone.

Now, you could also opt for Office 365 Home. For $99 a year, you get 5 installs of Office Professional 2016. So you get Outlook, you get Access, you get Publisher. You can install it on up to 5 machines at any given time. You can also share it with friends and family (Microsoft has an article about exactly how to do that...you could even split up the costs with your friends and family thus that each intsall would be a measily $20 a year). In addition, you also get 1TB of OneDrive space for 5 different Microsoft accounts.... so in essence you end up with 5TB of OneDrive space IN ADDITION to your 5 copies of Office Professional 2016.

So, if you bought those 2 standalone copies of Office Home and Business, you would have spent $459.99. Instead, for just $99 for year 1, your total investment would be $99. At the end of year 2 it would be $199.98, At the end of year 3 it would be $299.97, at the end of year 4 it would be $399.96. So, after 4 years you still have saved $60.03 from what you would have spent for those 2 standalone copies on day 1. And when the next version of Office comes out, with a 365 subscription you upgrade to it, no extra costs. With those standalone copies you are once again buying software.

So, people really need to sit down and evaluate what they need. If they just need 1 and only 1 copy of Office Home and Student and they don't need Outlook, Access or Publisher, they could spend the $149.99 once and be done. This would be financially in their best interest. But if they need 2 or more copies, or need Outlook, now they are spending $300+ for those standalone licenses and Office 365 should strongly be considered.