The V/VA- series was the first Roland arranger (I think) to move away from the tried and tested Sound Canvas engine, which was a marvel of integration.. Every sound was fine-tuned to work well with every other sound, kits were balanced against each other, sound interchangeability was flawless... But it was starting to sound a little dated, and Roland wanted to try using samples from other, more successful WS products. Unfortunately, the hybrid results from mixing the two systems together was not as smooth - there were noticeable jumps in volume between similar sounds. Two different E Pianos, for instance, at noticeably different volumes... One of the main requirements of an arranger be that you can change sounds without having to go and change volumes as well. To a certain extent, this problem still exists to this day, although, with the trend towards moving the arranger line to the Sonic Cell soundset (as shown on the new GW) might improve things as long as that is balanced well (haven't heard one, yet).

The other thing that went wrong with the V-series was the move away from realtime controls. The G1000 had physical buttons for just about everything, a lot more was screen or menu driven on the V's. At least this has been mostly addressed since the G70, with far more buttons than the V's. For me, it's close to perfect, with whatever you need that has not already got a dedicated button being able to be assigned to two general purpose buttons. a general purpose footswitch, the D-Beam and the seven button FC-7 pedal. Nicely customizable, IMO...

But for players used to doing a lot of realtime adjustments, the V-series was definitely a bust, I think. A complete shift in Roland strategy. This is the thing that amazes me... they had a best seller in the G1000, and what do they do? A complete about face..!

It definitely seems that whoever was in charge of the arranger division wasn't actually an arranger player

And don't get me started about them dropping the Chord Sequencer (that they had had on every TOTL arranger for years prior to the V-series. If no-one ever used it, or understood it, why did they keep it so long?

I just get the impression that Roland's arranger design team got a new leader, and possibly a whole team, and in their infinite wisdom, decided they knew better than the team that built the G1000. Big mistake.

So, while Yamaha and Korg incrementally improve their models, slowly adding features but seldom removing them, Roland have completely reinvented almost their entire OS at least twice since the G1000.

Insane... All we ever wanted was better sounds, and more complex styles wedded to the meat of the G1000 OS. What we got was the V-series, then the VA's, two utterly different arrangers, and now the G70, an attempt to return to the G1000 with some of the VA's strengths added.

It's only partially successful... The new Cover Tools, and especially the Makeup Tools are wonderful... easily one of the best things on ANY arranger. The style creation tools are a marvel, compared to the competition. And the basic sound, with the TD drums, VK organ and FantomX piano is a ballsy alternative to the anemic 'home' sound so favored by Yamaha.

But while Roland did a couple of 180º's, Yamaha was inventing Mega sounds, then SA sounds, and incorporating multipads, none of which there is ANY Roland equivalent for...

Roland's sales figures in Europe (the mainstay of arranger use, IMO) are not too bad, compared to the US, and they still have enough of a market share to probably indicate they are not going to just give up. But they have GOT to stop trying to reinvent the wheel every few years, LISTEN to their users a bit more (and not just the 'one finger' jockeys!) and keep the good when they throw out the bad...

But whatever comes out in the future from them, I still don't see it ever competing directly with Yamaha... These two have about as different a sound, OS, style philosophy, construction and operation as you can find. And for those of us that Yamaha do not impress, that's a GOOD thing!

Strangely, I am convinced that all the G70 needs is another major OS upgrade to be close to the perfect arranger... And only minor hardware improvements to be even better than that. There are enough buttons to do the job (almost!), everything's laid out where I can get to it. the Mark/Jump buttons could double as a Chord Sequencer controls if they added that back...

I guess my primary wishes for a new G-series would be

OS fixes to the system we have
Ability to route the VK to it's own output
Multiple drum tracks
Guitar Mode integrated with Style Mode
User Tones w/MFX and EQ stored on User Tone pages
Chord Sequencer

and that's about it...

Oh, OK, last AND definitely least - shave five pounds off it, and get back to the weight of the G1000 (strange that the G1000's weight wasn't as much of a dealbreaker as the G70's... have we all got that much weaker over ten years? ).

Pretty minor stuff, if you ask me...