I think, though, that the major difference between the arranger and the 'chord following loopstation/WS' is that the arranger is optimized for live play. All of that stuff you mentioned is pretty much impossible to get to on a gig. It means ultimate flexibility in the studio, but impossible complexity on the bandstand.

I am going to be VERY interested to see how the MoXS has been shaped for the live stage in it's S90XS and S70XS incarnations. It already appears to have several functions added to make splits and layers much easier to call up on the fly.

I had an XS7 here at my house for a while last week, and was completely stymied on how to call up the patches I wanted into a simple split/layer combination. Couldn't find the transposition button for bringing up the octave of the lower sound and down on the top sound to save my LIFE without a manual (which I deliberately chose not to use), let alone bring the correct effects in and assign them to the right parts.

All that flexibility makes it a PITA to use, live.

But the S70XS shows that Yamaha are at least TRYING to shoehorn the power into something that works well live. They don't have that far to go, IMO. Then it is merely the content. And Yamaha already have the personnel in place for that from their T3 team...

The 'arranger' is alive, although not yet mature. Only the name has been changed, to protect the innocent (from thinking they are playing their grandfather's arranger ).