Think of the other “relationship” for a second, that between Roland & Cakewalk.
Do you think Roland really need Cakewalk to sell boxes? I don’t believe so but the difference between Steinberg & Yamaha, is Yamaha are enhanced by Steinberg whereas with Roland it isn’t to the same degree because the development pedigree isn’t there.
The other aspect is Steinberg have managed to retain full independence in the process, which is again attributable to their obvious programming nous.
I wonder how closely integrated will the next Yamaha Workstation Keyboard (after Motif XF) , be with Cubase 6.5 or even Cubase 7 !
imho. Yamaha/Steinberg have a great opportunity to make a fantastic new Keyboard workstation with some super-cool integration features with Cubase/Nuendo.
Maybe we will see this happen next Winter NAMM ?
I see the new Yamaha THR 10 guitar amp / audio interface uses the same Yamaha Steinberg driver as the MR 816 and the Yamaha N12 mixer .
A Yamaha/Steinberg Tablet/Pad thingy for pros?
{‘-’}
Sounds mighty interesting. 
Yamaha has the habit of introducing something new with a lot of fuss around it suddently where nobody expects it
it would be nice to see something integrated with cubase maybe a rack version of the successor of motif (already showing its age)
I had no idea what cubase was it came with my yamaha keyboard
Looking forward to what YAMAHA will announce during the upcoming Musicmesse Show (April 10th-13th, 2013).
I would be very surprised if they don’t offer a very closely integrated new Worksation Keyboard with Cubase 7.
We shall see.
Cheers,
Muziksculp
My dream machine would be a sound module fully integrated in cubase with new synthesis types
we have so many keyboards they take up space and are more expensive even a PCIe card like a successor to the yamaha SW-1000XG would do