I was expecting the discontinuation.  The development of XSI has not matched the development of Maya and other AD products.

There are a few things that XSI does well, and does better than the other products.  If AD is willing to bring the XSI rotoscope capability into their other products, and some of the memory of last tool used, then there likely won't be much need for XSI. 

I've looked at maya, max, modo, c4d, and a few others.  I have yet to see any app that can load a blueprint into rotoscope and use in ortho views without distortion as either attached to camera, or attached to screen.  No need for image planes.  This one single capability is why XSI is such a good modeler for me.

Well, the ability to fine tune how you use a tool is also great in XSI. 

I would imagine that CrowdFX and Face Robot can be coded for the other apps.

XSI has not been promoted very well and a lot of forums like Renderosity don't have an XSI forum.  Some folks are outspoken against it and quite critical of those who use it for reasons that I will never understand.

As long as it works, I'll keep using it.  I suppose that in the future, my workflow will be bluprints in XSI, then when the basic parts are built, and its all art and creativity after that, move to some other app to finish.

 

Luxx, nice that the DAVE school has an offer for 3 people.  I suspect that there are more than three people who use XSI.  Digital Tutors has good online training for other apps.  As far as the "stress" of leaving XSI, I'm pretty sure that anyone who has used XSI to the level the app is capable of will be well versed in other AD products.  I don't see the transition being much more than a bit of time at the online sites including Gnomon online.