Well, what one person may find entirely intuitive, another may find counter-so. Plus, there's also the human 'subjective/objective' element and thus, reason options still exist for several things in our tech-dependent lives. One could intelligently make the same argument for say, photography. "Why does this photography group lean more to sticking with 'old school analog film' and all that messy developing chemical process when they could go with an DSLR device? We are all different.
It's also smart to realize that in this era that we are experiencing of an 'Analog Spring', there's going to be companies that are going to unapologetically 'cash-in' and *claim* analog synthesis can emulate real drums better--regardless of industry already been there--done that. But then there will *always* be the obvious in that nothing ever really *replaces entirely* real drum kits; similar to photography analogy aforementioned.
One would have thought Roland would not have moved in this direction again if it were not a capitalistic advantage 'to them'. Otherwise, Roland surely would have or is yet to re-release their then-cheap TB-303 and gang, to include the 101.
"Keeping up appearances" also has a lot to do with maintaining relevance in an ever-changing human need to explore. It's not entirely a bad thing. The Virus is still considered a massive tool that others are hell-bent to emulate via software. Kind of in the vein of the demand for the PPG sounds, thus the awesome Waldorf Nave iOS App.
(Same Waldorf development team made the iSEM App for Arturia...it was not Arturia's own team that did that.)
Was not exactly 'wowed-out' by this year's NAMM. But again, that's just this silly little human on this blue ball rolling through outer space.
