Can anyone confirm this? I will get rid of my LSD if this is true. Way cheaper route.
I've had multiple other cars with proper limited slip differentials pushing power to the front wheels and I'm not dissatisfied with the performance of XDS on the stock setting. With that said, XDS is not a 100% replacement for a mechanical limited slip differential.
XDS is nice because it does genuinely work as long as you pay close attention to what's happening at the front wheels. If you hit the sweet spot it's great, but if you're a bit too greedy on the throttle the engine overpowers the brake caliper on the wheel with the least grip making the system ineffective. What's tricky about it is that you don't get much feedback as a driver. With a mechanical limited slip you can usually feel it through the steering wheel, with XDS the only way you can tell is listening to the engine to get a sense if it's spinning up one of the driven wheels.
Another reason why XDS is nice is because is because you don't really get power-on understeer with it. If you ham fist the throttle coming out of a corner the inside tire is going to spin and the outside tire is going to keep grip and allow the car to track more or less where you tell it to via the steering wheel.
Please note that this is not the same as understeer due to more momentum than the tires can handle, even if the throttle is open to some degree, this is not what I mean by "on-throttle understeer." Typically when people say "power on over/under-steer" they're referring to what the car does when you apply more power to the tires than they can handle. What a car does when you ask it to cut a tighter arc than the tires have grip is more a handling balance thing best addressed by suspension adjustments.
But as everyone here is quick to point out, XDS simply cannot put power down as well as a mechanical limited slip. At stock or near stock horsepower XDS is fine, IMO. But when you get to the point where you can't effectively put down power in third gear, it's probably time to upgrade that differential.