Nope, that's exactly right. They wanted to harmonize the version numbers, make it easier to buy the bundles, and reduce the confusion over whether people were eligible for upgrade pricing (unfortunately, as of CS6, the new answer is "you're not"). The side effect of that is that now they release new versions on a set schedule, whether or not there are enough features in all the products to justify it. Photoshop and After Effects usually get enough new features to be worth upgrading, but other software, like Encore, get almost nothing.

So in some ways it's good, but in others it's bad.