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The %#$@!s in Altera who got bonuses for axing the simulator overlooked the most obvious unintended consequence, namely that once everything has been stuffed into HDLs and Modelsim suites, vendor lock disappears: with transportable HDL designs, any FPGA vendor can provide the silicon now.
Thus, I feel free to revisit Xilinx to see what they've got. X got arrogant for a while, but if I'm gonna relearn a simulator it might just as well be theirs.
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You do have valid points there. The distinguishing reason why I switched from Xilinx to Altera was superior off-the-shelf design entry tools. That doesn't mean that some other existing developer of huge (profitable) designs is going to switch because of some entry-level design tools; but it does mean that if you take away the off-the-shelf design entry tools, the chances a rookie developer will start using Altera (and then stick with it for the rest of his career) are getting very slim indeed.
It levels the playing-field, and therefore decreases vendor lock-in (which is good for the market/competition, but bad for Altera in this case, since they lose one of the few edges they had).
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