the release cycle atm isnt as rapid as XSI which is about a release every half year :s

i have heard some bad things about Alias|wavefront and Maya, albeit it was from a Softimage person, it did kinda make sense tho:

"The price drop earlier this year was merely confirmation of what the market has been willing to pay for Maya for some time. It also has an air of desperation to it: the new price is not sustainable. A 75% price drop requires a 400% increase in sales volume just to get back to where they were before the changes"

"Therefore it's no surprise that in parallel they closed R&D centers and dramatically reduced their field sales and support presence. We don't know if the rumors are true but laying off 150 people and seeing key people like Mark Sylvester leave also tells me that their management team is not particularly confident in their strategy"

"The net of all this is A|W effectively abandoning the middle and high-ends of the market: those customers will not buy software from a company that cannot support the cost of research and development and provide production-level support. Alias has essentially confirmed this, indicating they are going to concentrate on volume and not innovation - apparently conceding that they cannot keep pace with XSI's extraordinary rise in functionality"

didnt wanna post the link this being a maya site and all, but thats just what i read