I think I can help you, went the same path a few months ago.
If you buy an appliance, for example a 4610, you get the hardware and the 10 software blades, all licensed for the first year of signature updates in case of the IPS, App, URL, AV, etc.
For that first year you just need to buy the general support for the hardware itself.
After the first year, you need to buy the support for the hardware plus the signatures for all those other blades, and if you don't, they will stop to work properly. Thw firewall, vpn and management blades are perpetual, so if you don't pay anything to checkpoint you can keep on using them, just without software updates.