I'm still scratching my head how Arturia can put all those modules into one sleek looking hardware. It's not possible to put all the circuitries of Moog, ARP, CS80, Prophet, and mimimoog into a condensed form of hardware.
So the only answer to it is that they load all their VSTis into one hardware running off DSPs instead of a PC's CPU, put in a nice case with lots of knobs etc. and you get a nice looking hardware. So it's still basically "software" based.
It's tempting for people who wants to free up their CPU resources running Arturia's CPU-hungry VSTis. But at that price, perhaps a better alternative is to get a new notebook dedicated just for Arturia, get all their VSTis loaded into it, and buy some nice looking controllers (Behringer perhaps?). For those who already have extensive controllers running off their keyboards, they wouldn't need it. Anyone care to recalculate how much that will cost? Don't forget the notebook can do other things the Origin will not be able to do - if you dual boot it.
And Origin will be stuck with the current modules - no expandability. So with their new Jupiter8 VSTi out (and I believe many more in the future), they can't put it in, unless they have some form of firmware update option.
But still, the nice and sleek design IS tempting...
