Just take a look at Panic - most of their stuff is perpetual license software, with really only Nova requiring a subscription if you want ongoing updates after the first year. They make this model work for them by providing compelling software that just works - no unnecessary feature creep, proper rebuilds on new architectures rather than lazy ports, understanding what customers actually need versus what the broader industry says is a must-have. They’re successful in spite of largely being locked to the Mac, too, proving you can find success in even niche market segments if you’re actually listening to customers and providing a competent product.
To be fair, they’ve pivoted a bit these past few years into more experimental areas - game publishing and hardware, for example - but even those experiments have bore impressive successes for a company of their size and lineage.
So yes, it’s possible, and you don’t even have to find a captive audience to find success. Just do good work while nurturing your customer base.
Beyond Panic, there’s even a surprisingly large community of Mac/iOS developers making their living selling “premium”software with traditional licensing models. Rogue Amoeba, Omnigroup, Flying Meat, along with a bunch of one to two person shops are still around. There’s fewer of them than there used to be (some bought some folded), and many of the bigger ones switched to subscription pricing (1Password), but they’re still out there doing their thing if you know where to look.
To be fair, they’ve pivoted a bit these past few years into more experimental areas - game publishing and hardware, for example - but even those experiments have bore impressive successes for a company of their size and lineage.
So yes, it’s possible, and you don’t even have to find a captive audience to find success. Just do good work while nurturing your customer base.