They leaked information about the 4.2 upgrade for the CS2.
No rumours about MS2 upgrades yet. Would be nice to see bug fixes for some old bugs.

The decoders they install into locos are different from the decoders they sell separately. But the locos will take advantage of the new features, but the decoder firmware will be different (with mfx+, normally without DCC).

I do not track locomotive decoder hardware that closely, and am happy to have the following qualified.

However on Friday I sighted a recently purchased (presumably a run-out) 60942 (mLD) in its box.
Most noticeable was that the decoder was green with a serial number sticker on it, i.e. very similar to the 60972 (mLD/3).

My thoughts were either....
- the new hardware technology was available prior to the mLD/3 announce and they were shipping with older code loaded.
or
- it was, actually, the new 60972 (i.e. they were using up their stock of already printed 60742 boxes) and, once installed, we might find it has all the newer functions.

Regardless, any reference to a newer decoder may just be a marketing indication of overlap, with the newer hardware but without a direct tie in to the 60942/60972 product offerings. This idea extends to both mSD/3 and mFX+ where it is desirable (economically) to produce the minimum variants of hardware and up-sell any value with firmware.


For the NI2016 items, what struck me as very odd was that there was no "wow" locomotive in the roster that is to ship with more than 16 functions pre-configured.
I would have expected at least one avant item to be picked out to exemplify that the function was real and to help sell its functional use.
Sure!, the CS3 and/or a controller to support the 32 functions wont be available for another 3 months but that never stopped Marklin marketing in the past.


On the related issue of general technology, I had queried Marklin service on whether, on the mSD/3, in MM mode the 4th address F4 would be available and whether any additional (5th, 6th ..) address options would allow access to the upper functions. I did try to also query, again, the issue of the 4th address F3 not working. Unfortunately the reply gave me no confidence they had any substantial information about the */3 decoder, nor that they not even understood my question.