A quick read the links below seems to point towards Softimage is being "sidelined" as a key Autodesk media/entertainment 3d application and that it is instead being included with Max or Maya PREMIUM Entertainment Suites as an addon application like Mudbox.
http://www.cgchannel.com/2010/07/autodesk-entertainment-creation-suites-premium-launched-at-siggraph/
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=13420613&siteID=123112
http://area.autodesk.com/userdata/static/sigg10/pr/autodesk_suite_premium.pdf
UPDATE: Quote from Raffaele Fragapane on CGTalk:
Soft is still sold as stand-alone and has seen none of its areas of interest crippled, is still commercially viable on its own, and it exceeded sales expectations a couple times instead of bombing year after year and failing to strip market off its competitors.UPDATE2: Other quotes from people more knowledgable about this development:-
It simply doesn't have the same market penetration as Maya does, and saying otherwise would be delusional on Soft or Soft users side, so this is a way for AD to squeeze more money out of their biggest userbases (making a large and expensive bundle attractive) that they wouldn't otherwise milk. This much is pretty obvious, other speculations, until further announcements, are rather far fetched.
As long as it keeps feeding money into the ICE architecture and Soft features, and makes Soft seats available in studios that wouldn't have had one there before to begin with, Soft users don't have much to complain about. And I'm one of them.
http://groups.google.com/group/xsi_list/browse_thread/thread/c1ef25844792e043
I'm now convinced this is a real positive for Softimage and Softimage users - Autodesk have decided to address requests from many studios who use Max and Maya predominantly to have access to Softimage and it's tools. The new Premium Suite provides this access at a discount rate.
UPDATE3: To quote Mark Schoennagel on the SPH google group:
Lets just say very soon everyone who has Softimage will be getting Lagoa for free.
And if you put some funky colored glasses on it will even be in stereo... :)
