I think subscription models became associated with SaaS because cloud hype was at its peak around the time the first big corps were first migrating their products from perpetual licensing to susbscription, and just being on the cloud was seen as a selling point weighty enough to justify the price bump.

Now that cloud hype has died down, I don't see why subscription based would not be viable just because your product runs locally (assuming that all your competitors are already subscription based). ZBrush started selling local first subscriptions, so I guess we'll see soon enough whether that works out for them.