While several companies (including Roland themselves) offer emulations of their synth and workstation products, what they mostly emulate is the SOUNDS. Korg aren’t emulating the entire M1 for instance, you don’t get the sequencer. Most emulators are doing retro synths that had no workstation features.

Quite honestly, the idea of a software arranger emulation by one of the majors doesn’t strike me as a winner. The arranger demographic is mostly elderly players with, let’s be frank, rather limited technical inclination (don’t get mad, be honest! Highly technical arranger users are the exception, not the rule!) and a software arranger emulation will require a ton of work to map all the buttons and sliders to the functions. To be honest, there isn’t a controller out there with its button and slider layout designed the way arranger players use, and definitely nothing with a display big enough to map what arrangers show us while we’re playing.

Migrating to a software arranger would involve far more work than most of us are willing to do. So there’s the majority of its potential market gone. Not much incentive for a major to put a ton of money into…

Arrangers are amazing keyboards with an incredible degree of work done behind the scenes to integrate the sounds, OS and ergonomics to the point that the most inexperienced player can switch one on and have an enjoyable playing experience. It’s the reason why all software based arrangers have failed to make a dent in the hardware scene. That incredible effort to make them easy for beginners is gone, it’s up to YOU to balance the sounds and styles.

Why would an arranger company torpedo their hardware sales making a software emulation when there’s such a tiny market? The boat has sailed… maybe if a full emulation came out 20 years ago it might have stood a chance, but 20 years ago a full software arranger from a major would not have run well on existing cheap PC’s, and you’ve still got the issue of an arranger layout controller.

We’re a dying breed, it makes zero sense for a major to compete with their own product…