Face Robot doesn’t require a performance capture studio to be used, and you don’t have to hand animated all those markers to animate with those rigs, not to mention you can always jerry rig the asset whichever merry way you want once it’s out of FR 
The workflow is just a fully automated rigging process with “pick here then there, choose this or that” kind of steps that will build a rig fitting a head of your choice.
It works well on more than just human heads (used it on Max of where the wild things are when we were testing it in RSP, and that’s pretty far from human) and is generally stable.
It will be out with the demo anyway, it is simply part of XSI not an external app that won’t be available for trial or anything, so you can give it a shot yourself when it’s out.
As for the upgrade being compared to Maya’s, I’d say you have to use 2010 before making a call on whether it’s an upgrade or not, it’s that kind of release. But it definitely isn’t in a situation where it’s virtually the same exact code of the previous reason, with everything done inbetween missing because it couldn’t be stabilized, with a couple DOA apps thrown in the mix for a price upping.
People are making a lot of assumptions about AD doind or not doing stuff, but unless you’ve been on the betas they remain assumptions I’m afraid.
XSI hasn’t been abandoned or anything, all the usual developers were there and interacting with testers the usual way, and there’s been a rather quick turnaround of betas to make sure the software was stabilized properly and encourage use in production.
Yes, ICE kine are a notable absent, but that’s because they’re a big deal to stabilize AND rebuild tools around (remember they aren’t just about enabling a feature, they simply change the way you rig and do a number of other things forever), and this version’s plan was to be scalable fast and stable, so there’s only that much you can put into the pot in 10 months.
If anything it’s all the stuff that people have been asking forever now finally making it in, like if they were working through a backlot.
Better code editing all around, better undos, normal editing, scene debugging… I had seen those things getting logged for years at an end, and am happy they finally got to take care of a at least a few of them on top of all the main performance work.
