Everything is speculation at this point because, as we know, Yamaha runs a very tight-lipped ship. ? So until Yamaha starts divulging some information about the new Montage successor, we can at least provide our own input of what we hope to see on this new beast. IMO, I kind of doubt Yamaha would incorporate an onboard sampler since Yamaha owns Steinberg, and Steinberg makes Cubase, which is a very capable DAW for both MIDI and Audio functionality including importing and micro-editing of samples, etc. Building an onboard sampler kind of defeats the purpose of owning Steinberg, no? 😉 What I think we might see is Pads (buttons), perhaps 16 total, like you see on the Roland Fantom, etc. October isn't too far off, although I suspect Yamaha will be as quiet as a church mouse up until launch day, in order to heighten interest and enthusiasm as the big day draws near.

Roland and others do pads but I'm not convinced Yamaha will or have they ever?

I still think they should release a module only as we don't need more keys. Focus full cost into a monster module.

Will they tilt the screen this time? Or have a direct video out? XLR? MPE/MIDI2?

Osmose uses MPE+ which is beyond regular MPE. Does some round robin stuff so the silly thing can't even control another Osmose correctly. I can work around it but why have the MIDI input for using something less than Osmose to control another Osmose? Makes no sense.

I guess the MIDI standard isn't good enough which is why we need MIDI2.

Hopefully even if the Montage keys aren't MPE that the guts can communicate MPE. It's what's hot and coming and several units these days have MPE capabilities. Call it having a separate envelope per finger the days of not having your left hand on the keys should be gone forever or at least optional without losing expression.

I still don't think AWM2 could work efficiently with MPE without a ton of work and AWM2 is never cheap even for a boring static waveform. To do a real MPE sax for example you'd need 20 AWM2 variations in tone and timbre sampled well across the keyboard like every 3rd note. Or advanced modeling mixture like on the CP1 which was absurdly expensive. Osmose has done it all for pennies which is insane. Like 500 different instruments in a box. I mean it needs some improvements but what a great start that anyone can afford. Yamaha can't really do affordable except with third generation CK, MODX etc. If it made high quality I don't mind paying extra. CK is made too cheap for my taste but it's smart.

The "future expandability" can cut both ways. On one hand, oh goody I get something more in 2,3,4,5,6,7 years. Yamaha is as slow as Christmas literally. But who knows what that will be and by then as some have pointed out, the YT videos are long past and your gear has fallen short. No one is going back to re-compare units. Sales are gone unless you can dominate on or at release date.