I think it wil.
I own both and they both sound great, but Halion’s work flow and interface is far superior and more productive.
Things like the slot rack and drag and drop of sliced loops and just dragging audio from Cubase tracks, are seemingly small things but major factors for productivity.
I quite frequently read about users that have switched from Kontakt for day to day work because of the more modern interface and subsequently become more involved in Instrument design.
Halion has only had scripting and the macro page designer since the introduction of version 6.
The learning curve is steep. Not so much because of the language or the manual, because Lua is quite user friendly and the manual is quite thorough.
Definitely more so than Kontakt scripting.
The thing is, we are musicians that have to learn to code and not coders who have to learn to make music. So there are unforeseen scenarios and concepts we have to learn and research on the fly.
I think bigger companies are holding back to see what is what before they commit.
Just on the interface and workflow front, if Kontakt is going to have to make a pit stop to modernise, Halion wil make significant gains.
Quite interesting that Kontakt added wave table functionality shortly after Halion did.
Also, Steinberg is playing the long game. Halon SE comes with Cubase and is better integrated than Kontakt player.