The government regulations are both helpful and harmful in saw developments.
If you take a large step back, saws have moved away from some of the super smokey 10:1 homelites and macs because of cleaner emissions regs. That's what brought us some of these more efficient, higher RPM, lower torque machines. I know lots of guys on here like these, but I think most professional timber fallers would rather use a modern saw for the benefits in emissions and weight/ergonomics over these older saws.
If you take a smaller step back, you'll realize that all the saw companies basically procrastinated coming up with new saw designs until the epa regs rolled around. the EPA regs are driving the innovation, to some degree. In countries where they don't have EPA regs or an equivalent, IE south america, they sell the old models. The only saw stihl reworked a bit before the big strato shift was the 036 going to a 361 for example, but pretty much everything else, changing up the 210, 290, etc, was all put off until they had to.
If you look at like the development of better AV systems...that was largely brought about by regulation of the european union, when they started limiting the numbers of hours that workers were allowed to use tools that put out very high levels of vibration.
I agree that the EPA stuff has eliminated some really good saws 372, 262, etc, but it has also brought us many good saws 346 NE, stihl ms 261, etc, etc. And look how excited we are for this! And it's a strato saw. I'll also point to the fact that many people think that the 372 xtorq is better than the original 372.
Edit: To continue my rant just a bit, the saw companies don't really have much reason to innovate and come up with new saws in the absence of regulations. Stihl and Husqvarna are really then only competing with eachother, and if neither innovates and comes up with new stuff, then it's just the same old brand war. The majority of saws are bought because they need to be bought. In the context of this website, lots of us may go out and buy a 562 or a 555 because we think they're cool and exciting, etc.
But for the overwhelming majority of other saw buyers, it's go to the store, buy the saw that's in the size/price range you need, and then go home. I'm sure plenty of larger tree companies and timber companies are still in the act (today, tomorrow, even a month from now perhaps) of buying a 357xp or a 359 not caring what's on the horizon, because they need it then and there.
So, I think in the absence of a lot of these regulations and sources of pressure for the manufacturers to change things up, there wouldn't be anywhere near as much variety/models/features out there as there are now.
Definitely a mixed blessing though. I'm highlighting the good without criticizing the bad, which I do acknowledge.
