The S3X is here

Someone I know did some prototype testing about one and a half years ago. He broke two of them in very little time. I tried it and it had loads of play. Also the normal SA three speeds are shit compared to the Sram ones. I can only hope the production model is much much better than the prototype was. I´m not trying to bash SA, just sharing my experiance. I like the idea tough.

By "normal" do you mean the AW3?
That has now been superceded by the SRF, which I understand has eliminated the old AW problems. I've got one to try out so I'll report back when I have.

SRAM and Shimano of course started with hub gears by taking SA hubs and copying them, and doing it badly. The original Shimano 3 speeds were cheap, fragile crap. They only got good when Sturmey had been asset stripped, and had neither the will nor the means to defend its patents.