I simply don't see the need, in ANY area of keyboard production, to keep constantly current with whatever the latest model is. Same with cars. You don't buy the NEXT model of whatever you are driving the minute it comes out, do you? The car you bought still gets you from A to B the same way it did last year... This year's model is going to change in only a few minor details...

Same with arrangers. To be honest, I don't imagine that Yamaha or anybody EXPECTS their entire customer base to upgrade EVERY model change. I am pretty sure they never have. Every new model that comes out is more likely to be picked up by someone that is a couple or three models behind it, as changes are usually so incremental, it hardly makes it worth anyone's while to simply go from one to the next.

And, whether Roland are in the arranger business or not (personally, as dwindling as the high end market for arrangers is becoming, I can't fault anyone for getting out of the segment), I never found the need to incrementally upgrade even when they WERE bringing a new model out every three years or so. I did an incremental upgrade just the once, from G800 to G1000, because of the incredible superiority of loading instantaneously from Zip rather than glacially from floppy, and I actually MADE money on the swap (worked in a music store at the time), but after I got the G1000, that was IT until the G70... well over ten years later.

To be honest, if anyone even now looks long and hard at what they are getting for their upgrade cost, waiting at least TWO (or better, three!) models down the line will get you something REALLY noticeably superior to what they currently have, not something you have to strain to hear a difference.

And, I believe that for all but the diehard few (like some here), manufacturers don't EXPECT us to upgrade constantly. They make their money from customers of a few generations ago. And new customers, and migrants from other manufacturers. Roland's business model was no different to anyone else's. I have said, many times, I truly believe that the G70 was an underselling performer because they moved the selling of it from MI stores to CK Mom and Pop stores that had no interest in it, no established customer base for it, and few salesmen capable of demo-ing it. But the fact that, sonically, it STILL holds water compared to models at least one product cycle newer shows that there was nothing intrinsically wrong with it. Bad marketing can kill a product as effectively as bad design... But prior to this model, Roland were pumping them out every three years or so, with incremental upgrades no differently than Yamaha were.

I simply think that Roland are ahead of the curve... The writing has been on the wall for ages, few players younger than fifty, especially in the US, are using arrangers at all, WS's with loop capabilities are the dominant form of live keyboard and studio keyboard, nobody even MAKES an arranger capable of sounding remotely contemporary (unless you count the über-expensive, über-complicated VSTi based arrangers), and how can a market segment grow when its' users are aging and dying off, slowly? I simply find too many parallels to what happened to the 'home organ' market in the seventies. They stopped being the dominant form of keyboard, got more and more expensive as fewer and fewer got sold, and eventually turned into a niche product you virtually can't find in most music stores. Sound familiar?

Yamaha are consolidating the market, almost monopolizing it, and with HUGE low end sales, still able to produce MOTL and TOTL models that don't NEED to be huge hits just to carry the division. Roland have gone low-end almost completely, and perhaps their strategy is to see if they can compete at the high volume, low end before they gamble a fortune on another high-end product that might be rejected by all but a few connoisseurs of great sound unconcerned about 'me too' features or light weight.

If Roland go quietly into that long dark night, at least they left on a high note, at least IMO. At this point, even five years after its' release, I see nothing on the market that clearly and across the board dominates the G70, especially sonically. And no-one is pursuing a course I think reflects MY needs in an arranger (I always prefer sonic and MUSICAL upgrades rather than mp3 fluff and features for the amateur player), so I can't honestly see anyone bringing out anything I think to myself 'I GOT to have one of these!' in the foreseeable future.

In the meantime, WS's like the MoXF slowly (but too slowly for me!) add more and more arranger-like functionality, while few if any of their good features migrate to arrangers, so it is pretty obvious where we are heading.

Goodbye, arranger...