Korg used to be a wonderful company. They made versatile and affordable synths & drum machines with a unique flavor.
Then someone in design came up with the "Kaossilator" - a cheap touch pad attached to varying X & Y parameters of a shit ROMpler synth.
By raiding the archives of its own machinery, Korg was able to fill this cheap ROMpler synth with stock sounds that they'd already developed for use with previously released synths.
TLDR, what Korg had done was figured out how to turn 99 cents worth of plastic into a pocket sized unit that could be sold for 99$.
By using old stock sounds and parts from preexisting units, there were no fabrication or sound design costs.
It was like pure profit!
Unfortunately, the higher ups at Korg looked at the Kaossilator, selling millions, and they got the idea that they likely get away with dumbing down the rest of their product line. They began to do just that.
Wires were made thinner, less glue was used. Metal components became plastic ones and Korg began to forgo shit like sturdy button membranes in their desktop units, which still cost as much as always but were now being made with the shit tier production ethos defined first by their cost cutting kaossillator.
It was profitable to be cheap af with their builds. More products like the cigarette pack sized kaossilator began being cranked out. Samplers and synthesis went by the wayside. Instead, we got Nintendo DS apps and shit like the KORG Gadget, all of which are just rehashed sounds and infrastructure ported to the system du jour.
